7 hours ago, we_gotta_believe said:

Not everyone else, just you. That much was obvious the minute you came in here saying Russia wouldn't dare invade if enough US citizens and companies were there in Ukraine.

Never said that either.  

Wasn’t Trump president from 2016 to 2020? Wasn’t the "proxy” war raging on in the Donbass during that time? Weren’t there multiple cease fire agreements from 2018 to 2020, which were broken by the Russian separatists and active Russian troops? So let’s be clear, Trump didn’t bring peace to the region either. The conflict carried on during his term as well.

Putting that aside, what’s the plan when/if Trump leaves office when his term is up? If he is the only person on Earth that can keep Putin from waging war in any form, how will there be peace if Trump is not around?

7 hours ago, Bill said:

 

I'm assuming you know history so what is the major difference between the first countries Hitler invaded vs what Russia just did?  Correct - Ukraine stopped Russia from taking over their country.  Austria & Poland did not stop Hitler from invading and taking over in 1939. 

Three years has past since the Russia-Ukraine war started.

Do you know what Hitler did in the 3 years after he invaded Poland?  He went on to take France and almost the entire continent of Europe.  All within 3 years.

Had Ukraine not stopped the invasion and Russia had continued to invade countries - then maybe you could compare the two - but as of now, it's far from the same thing. 

21 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

I'm assuming you know history so what is the major difference between the first countries Hitler invaded vs what Russia just did?  Correct - Ukraine stopped Russia from taking over their country.  Austria & Poland did not stop Hitler from invading and taking over in 1939. 

Three years has past since the Russia-Ukraine war started.

Do you know what Hitler did in the 3 years after he invaded Poland?  He went on to take France and almost the entire continent of Europe.  All within 3 years.

Had Ukraine not stopped the invasion and Russia had continued to invade countries - then maybe you could compare the two - but as of now, it's far from the same thing. 

How stupid of me to compare step one of a three step process to step one of a three step process. 

23 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

I'm assuming you know history so what is the major difference between the first countries Hitler invaded vs what Russia just did?  Correct - Ukraine stopped Russia from taking over their country.  Austria & Poland did not stop Hitler from invading and taking over in 1939. 

Three years has past since the Russia-Ukraine war started.

Do you know what Hitler did in the 3 years after he invaded Poland?  He went on to take France and almost the entire continent of Europe.  All within 3 years.

Had Ukraine not stopped the invasion and Russia had continued to invade countries - then maybe you could compare the two - but as of now, it's far from the same thing. 

Yeah, NATO works. 

2 hours ago, Diehardfan said:

 

 

Here's me standing with Ukraine

 

 

...in Ukraine.

1 minute ago, Bill said:

Here's me standing with Ukraine

 

 

...in Ukraine.

Is that really you? 

Yet again Zelensky thanks the USA and says he is ready to sign a minerals deal if there are real security guarantees.

He has been 100% clear time and again from the very beginning. 

41 minutes ago, DrPhilly said:

Yet again Zelensky thanks the USA and says he is ready to sign a minerals deal if there are real security guarantees.

He has been 100% clear time and again from the very beginning. 

Hopefully the deal gets done.  And it looks as if Putin would be on board with it as well - given the fact that he's open to similar type deals with Western companies for Russia's rare Earth minerals.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdx7488g5o

10 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

Hopefully the deal gets done.  And it looks as if Putin would be on board with it as well - given the fact that he's open to similar type deals with Western companies for Russia's rare Earth minerals.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdx7488g5o

Well, if the US gives Ukraine a real military security agreement then it will make the discussion with Putin very very difficult.  At this point, I'd say Putin won't sign anything given how the Trump WH has behaved over the last few weeks.  The next step is that Putin will tell Trump to cut off all the military aid to Ukraine.  That will give Putin some breathing room to recoup while pressure builds on Zelensky to resign.

Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle.

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1895883813223354871

 

What do I tweak to get the Tweet to embed properly?

 

 

17 minutes ago, DrPhilly said:

Well, if the US gives Ukraine a real military security agreement then it will make the discussion with Putin very very difficult.  At this point, I'd say Putin won't sign anything given how the Trump WH has behaved over the last few weeks.  The next step is that Putin will tell Trump to cut off all the military aid to Ukraine.  That will give Putin some breathing room to recoup while pressure builds on Zelensky to resign.

Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle.

And don’t leave out that Zelenskyj and Ukraine will be blamed for not wanting peace. Trump could’ve ended it in 24 hours and with one phone call to his pal, but Ukraine doesn’t want peace and wants to fight on just for the love of losing more of its citizens. 

Just now, Frankfurteagle89 said:

And don’t leave out that Zelenskyj and Ukraine will be blamed for not wanting peace. Trump could’ve ended it in 24 hours and with one phone call to his pal, but Ukraine doesn’t want peace and wants to fight on just for the love of losing more of its citizens. 

Yes of course.  That and probably 20 other things they push out there.

3 minutes ago, DrPhilly said:

That is disgraceful and disgusting! Comrade Tucker at his best.

3 minutes ago, Frankfurteagle89 said:

That is disgraceful and disgusting! Comrade Tucker at his best.

The level of pro Russia anti Ukraine propaganda is off the charts.  Add in all the discontinued intelligence toward Russia and there really is only one conclusion to be made.  I think the European leaders are in denial right now and only half of the US has figured it out.

The MAGA story out there is centered around the supposed meetings Zelensky had with Dem politicians ahead of the WH gathering.  The Trumptards are pushing that on my FB feed and in here.  They've convinced themselves that Zelensky reneged on the deal after the Dems told him to do so. Of course, they completely ignore everything else that Zelensky said both prior, during, and after the WH event.  When challenged they turn to the Rubio interview which to be fair was misleading but not really that hard to decipher.

19 minutes ago, Ace Nova said:

Hopefully the deal gets done.  And it looks as if Putin would be on board with it as well - given the fact that he's open to similar type deals with Western companies for Russia's rare Earth minerals.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdx7488g5o

The issue for Russia is that their economy is in the toilet and what is left of it is being propped up by the war effort. If the war effort stops, there’s nothing left to prop it up, and then there’s 600k extra males rejoining the workforce, but there’s no jobs, and for a totalitarian dictator, the last thing you want is a bad economy and 600k military aged males to be unemployed, and those military aged males to have actual military experience. 
 

The only thing that would help Russia is sanctions relief, which would allow them to not only not feel the effects of their bad decisions, but allow them to rebuild their military to do it again. 
 

They cut their teeth in Chechnya twice and then tried in Georgia in 08, and found out the hard way that they weren’t good at military intervention. So they went to the drawing board and came up with the Battalion Tactical Group system and tested it in Syria to success. Only problem is that fighting an insurgent irregular force isn’t the same as fighting a conventional force. So they took their BTG system to Ukraine and found out the limitations of a BTG. We did the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then the Army was all about fighting as a division, but in GWOT we got away with Brigade Combat Teams.

(A brigade is kinda in between a battalion and a division in terms of size. Russia probably copied a bit of our homework on BCT when they came up with BTG.) The Marines do their thing with what they call a MAGTF, which is basically a scalable deployable unit. (Small stuff? MEU (SOC). Medium war? MEB. War war? A MEF.) (Since the 60s the Marines probably have the best doctrine money can buy, but anyway.)

So yeah we figured out with what’s going on in Ukraine that fighting as a division is the way to go. The issue is that Russia figured it out, too. They’re very stupid at the start of a conflict, but unfortunately they come up with pretty decent adaptations. It takes them a minute to implement them, but they’re not stupid on the long run.
 

So the issue that I have is what Russia has done in the long run. They do some 19th century empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then do more 19th venture empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then…

 

Every single President since Clinton has thought that they could get through to the Russians and that everyone before them just didn’t get it and they knew what they were doing better than their predecessors. Not even being hyperbolic with this. Literally every single President since Clinton has tried and failed to get along with Russia. And then to make things more complicated we invaded Iraq. We get how monumentally stupid this was now, and we pretty much have no worry about doing this again for the foreseeable future, but we have the political memory of a goldfish. The rest of the world is ancient and they don’t forget, and every tinpot dictator is thinking that at any moment we can and will do some GWOT era nationbuilding, which means them getting deposed because they know they can’t compete with us militarily.

 

So, more or less the issue I have with a cease fire peace deal with Russia is the fact that every single time there’s been a cease fire peace deal involving Russia they just try to figure out how to do it better and then do it again anyway. And thinking that it’s just Putin doing this and if he goes away that it’s done is not correct. The closest political rival Putin had was Navalny, and even he was an ultranationalist who supported the invasion of Ukraine. If a peace agreement can be reached, it’ll just be violated again in two to four years, with the added caveat that we’ll also be having to deal with China then because that’s probably when they’re going to start ish in SE Asia, so we are just gonna kick the can down the road and turn today’s problem into tomorrow’s dilemma. 
 

Basically a cease fire peace agreement with Russia is like a liberal Californian judge giving a career criminal no bail for a felony and cutting them loose and thinking they won’t break the law again, because THEY are a better judge than all the other judges before and they totally got through to the defendant and successfully convinced them to leave their life of crime behind.  

Unless the President is the reanimated remains of Nixon, Reagan, or GHWB, you can be assured that whoever it is has the complete opposite policy towards Russia than what they should have.

34 minutes ago, DrPhilly said:

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1895883813223354871

 

What do I tweak to get the Tweet to embed properly?

In the link you gotta change the x.com to Twitter.com, but you gotta do it in the url bar before you copy paste it, because if you change it in the post, it won’t format when you hit submit. 

1 hour ago, Ace Nova said:

Is that really you? 

I was in Ukraine for almost a year after the start of the war. Part of an instructor group.

 

Ukrainians are salt of the earth decent people and I grew to have an affinity towards them. So I want to do everything I can to keep them safe, and keep the friends I made there from having to be in the ish. I want nothing more than the war to end, but after reading into modern Russian history and seeing it first hand over there, I know that we can’t make a deal here.

 

To a totalitarian dictator, diplomacy is considered a weakness, and to them weakness is provocative. 

10 minutes ago, Bill said:

In the link you gotta change the x.com to Twitter.com, but you gotta do it in the url bar before you copy paste it, because if you change it in the post, it won’t format when you hit submit. 

Ahh ok, I see.  I fixed it now and hopefully can remember it next time.  I'm very rarely on Twitter so it might a while.

38 minutes ago, DrPhilly said:

When Ukrainian soldiers go the range to practice they have to sign for every bullet. And I don’t mean the unit as a whole. Each soldier literally has to sign for the bullets they are getting to practice.

I don’t think people understand the level of bureaucracy in a post Soviet state. 

30 minutes ago, Bill said:

The issue for Russia is that their economy is in the toilet and what is left of it is being propped up by the war effort. If the war effort stops, there’s nothing left to prop it up, and then there’s 600k extra males rejoining the workforce, but there’s no jobs, and for a totalitarian dictator, the last thing you want is a bad economy and 600k military aged males to be unemployed, and those military aged males to have actual military experience. 
 

The only thing that would help Russia is sanctions relief, which would allow them to not only not feel the effects of their bad decisions, but allow them to rebuild their military to do it again. 
 

They cut their teeth in Chechnya twice and then tried in Georgia in 08, and found out the hard way that they weren’t good at military intervention. So they went to the drawing board and came up with the Battalion Tactical Group system and tested it in Syria to success. Only problem is that fighting an insurgent irregular force isn’t the same as fighting a conventional force. So they took their BTG system to Ukraine and found out the limitations of a BTG. We did the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then the Army was all about fighting as a division, but in GWOT we got away with Brigade Combat Teams.

(A brigade is kinda in between a battalion and a division in terms of size. Russia probably copied a bit of our homework on BCT when they came up with BTG.) The Marines do their thing with what they call a MAGTF, which is basically a scalable deployable unit. (Small stuff? MEU (SOC). Medium war? MEB. War war? A MEF.) (Since the 60s the Marines probably have the best doctrine money can buy, but anyway.)

So yeah we figured out with what’s going on in Ukraine that fighting as a division is the way to go. The issue is that Russia figured it out, too. They’re very stupid at the start of a conflict, but unfortunately they come up with pretty decent adaptations. It takes them a minute to implement them, but they’re not stupid on the long run.
 

So the issue that I have is what Russia has done in the long run. They do some 19th century empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then do more 19th venture empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then…

 

Every single President since Clinton has thought that they could get through to the Russians and that everyone before them just didn’t get it and they knew what they were doing better than their predecessors. Not even being hyperbolic with this. Literally every single President since Clinton has tried and failed to get along with Russia. And then to make things more complicated we invaded Iraq. We get how monumentally stupid this was now, and we pretty much have no worry about doing this again for the foreseeable future, but we have the political memory of a goldfish. The rest of the world is ancient and they don’t forget, and every tinpot dictator is thinking that at any moment we can and will do some GWOT era nationbuilding, which means them getting deposed because they know they can’t compete with us militarily.

 

So, more or less the issue I have with a cease fire peace deal with Russia is the fact that every single time there’s been a cease fire peace deal involving Russia they just try to figure out how to do it better and then do it again anyway. And thinking that it’s just Putin doing this and if he goes away that it’s done is not correct. The closest political rival Putin had was Navalny, and even he was an ultranationalist who supported the invasion of Ukraine. If a peace agreement can be reached, it’ll just be violated again in two to four years, with the added caveat that we’ll also be having to deal with China then because that’s probably when they’re going to start ish in SE Asia, so we are just gonna kick the can down the road and turn today’s problem into tomorrow’s dilemma. 
 

Basically a cease fire peace agreement with Russia is like a liberal Californian judge giving a career criminal no bail for a felony and cutting them loose and thinking they won’t break the law again, because THEY are a better judge than all the other judges before and they totally got through to the defendant and successfully convinced them to leave their life of crime behind.  

Unless the President is the reanimated remains of Nixon, Reagan, or GHWB, you can be assured that whoever it is has the complete opposite policy towards Russia than what they should have.

You raise some good points.

Russia has seemed like an aggressor in many of these conflicts that have arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union.  And before that, it was the Cold War.  So Western Civilization has grown accustomed to viewing Russia as "The enemy" and this has been going on for 3-4 generations.  "It's all we know" in a sense. 

But during WWII - Russia was the one that was invaded by Hitler and the NSDAPs and it was Russia that helped Europe and The U.S. secure victory over Hitler in Europe.  

So although you raise valid points in assuming that "Russia will just be at it again in a few years" - maybe so - maybe not - that still shouldn't stop Ukraine and its allies from seeking peace.  If something happens in 5 years - it happens and it will be dealt with them - but from now until then, hundreds of thousands of lives and billions in resources could be saved.

And who knows - with the right type of leaders in place (like the ones you mentioned, who had successful relations with Russia) it could last much longer than that. 

 

40 minutes ago, Bill said:

The issue for Russia is that their economy is in the toilet and what is left of it is being propped up by the war effort. If the war effort stops, there’s nothing left to prop it up, and then there’s 600k extra males rejoining the workforce, but there’s no jobs, and for a totalitarian dictator, the last thing you want is a bad economy and 600k military aged males to be unemployed, and those military aged males to have actual military experience. 
 

The only thing that would help Russia is sanctions relief, which would allow them to not only not feel the effects of their bad decisions, but allow them to rebuild their military to do it again. 
 

They cut their teeth in Chechnya twice and then tried in Georgia in 08, and found out the hard way that they weren’t good at military intervention. So they went to the drawing board and came up with the Battalion Tactical Group system and tested it in Syria to success. Only problem is that fighting an insurgent irregular force isn’t the same as fighting a conventional force. So they took their BTG system to Ukraine and found out the limitations of a BTG. We did the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then the Army was all about fighting as a division, but in GWOT we got away with Brigade Combat Teams.

(A brigade is kinda in between a battalion and a division in terms of size. Russia probably copied a bit of our homework on BCT when they came up with BTG.) The Marines do their thing with what they call a MAGTF, which is basically a scalable deployable unit. (Small stuff? MEU (SOC). Medium war? MEB. War war? A MEF.) (Since the 60s the Marines probably have the best doctrine money can buy, but anyway.)

So yeah we figured out with what’s going on in Ukraine that fighting as a division is the way to go. The issue is that Russia figured it out, too. They’re very stupid at the start of a conflict, but unfortunately they come up with pretty decent adaptations. It takes them a minute to implement them, but they’re not stupid on the long run.
 

So the issue that I have is what Russia has done in the long run. They do some 19th century empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then do more 19th venture empire ish, get some sanctions which eventually go away, they adapt and then…

 

Every single President since Clinton has thought that they could get through to the Russians and that everyone before them just didn’t get it and they knew what they were doing better than their predecessors. Not even being hyperbolic with this. Literally every single President since Clinton has tried and failed to get along with Russia. And then to make things more complicated we invaded Iraq. We get how monumentally stupid this was now, and we pretty much have no worry about doing this again for the foreseeable future, but we have the political memory of a goldfish. The rest of the world is ancient and they don’t forget, and every tinpot dictator is thinking that at any moment we can and will do some GWOT era nationbuilding, which means them getting deposed because they know they can’t compete with us militarily.

 

So, more or less the issue I have with a cease fire peace deal with Russia is the fact that every single time there’s been a cease fire peace deal involving Russia they just try to figure out how to do it better and then do it again anyway. And thinking that it’s just Putin doing this and if he goes away that it’s done is not correct. The closest political rival Putin had was Navalny, and even he was an ultranationalist who supported the invasion of Ukraine. If a peace agreement can be reached, it’ll just be violated again in two to four years, with the added caveat that we’ll also be having to deal with China then because that’s probably when they’re going to start ish in SE Asia, so we are just gonna kick the can down the road and turn today’s problem into tomorrow’s dilemma. 
 

Basically a cease fire peace agreement with Russia is like a liberal Californian judge giving a career criminal no bail for a felony and cutting them loose and thinking they won’t break the law again, because THEY are a better judge than all the other judges before and they totally got through to the defendant and successfully convinced them to leave their life of crime behind.  

Unless the President is the reanimated remains of Nixon, Reagan, or GHWB, you can be assured that whoever it is has the complete opposite policy towards Russia than what they should have.

Very good analysis and write up. Total agreement! 👍👍👍