There is an elephant in the room regarding any Eastern European / Nordic mutual defense alliance; the need for such an alliance to have a nuclear deterrent against the possibility that "some of its (Russia's) nuclear weapons may work". The thought of Poles in control of nuclear weapons will give Germany nightmares. Personally, I think any Russian nukes that work are aimed at China (the Russians will nuke their own territory in Siberia to keep the Chinese out) but I wouldn't bet Warsaw on it.
That goes for Ukraine, too, which got conned out of its nukes - the third largest force in Europe, in 1994 by the US, UK, France, and, of course, Russia... That was the Budapest Memorandum.
Thanks for the link. Note this - "The idea, for example, that the UK can only afford to send in 10,000 troops - and the 20,000 REMFs backing it up - is laughable - Ukraine is Europe’s second poorest country, yet it has been able to field a force of ten times that. Surely the UK as one of the world’s richest countries, with a population of nearly 70 million, nearly twice the size of Ukraine, can easily afford to do better than that. And that’s true for a lot of the countries in Europe, as witness the pathetic performance of Chris Heusgen from Germany - usually drunks just leave parties when the free beer runs out. A lot of the ex-Soviet countries are not like this, but they have a damned good idea of what is at stake, the memory is still fresh." https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/president-trumps-fantastic-peace (post edited to reflect population figures, which make Keir Starmer's whine about not being able to do anything look frankly pathetic...) In this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jnxrqeOYPM - replace Patton with JD Vance and the sleeping soldier with Europe, and that's a fair commentary on the current situation
I doubt many would make good soldiers. But if all the young adult males in the boats were rounded up and conscripted to do something tough one suspects the numbers of such people coming in following waves would decline fast (see e.g. Trump & the Mexican border)
I did not think this when it first started, but IF reports of what the US was doing in Ukraine are even partially true, well if Russia was doing the same in Mexico, we Americans would hang anyone who stood in the way of invading Mexico to through the Russians out.
It also seems that there are many in the US and possibly the UK who are getting g rich off the international financial being sent to Ukraine.
I am not a Putin fan. I hate that he invaded, but it does seem that the U.S. was poking the bear and happy with the result.
As far as T wanting to negotiate peace with Putin, I do not think he cares if the peace is durable or not. It is to disentangle the US from the whole affair and leave it up to those in whose backyard all this is happening in to deal with it. “Not our problem, you handle it.” Kinda situation.
If pansy assed EU dipshits would rather spend their money on Green castles in the sky when they have a potential aggressor down the block, how in the hell is my duty to provide them anything? They made their bed, they can lie in it.
"... means that for Eastern Europe to be stable and able to have self determination they need to deter Russian aggression until it becomes clear that Russia no longer seeks to control them."
Hum, the same is true if you replace the word Russia with American ABC agencies, or EU, or NWO or whatever.
As is known, since the beginning I've suggested there are two sides to the story & if one wants to understand, it's needed to see both sides.
Also I find it curious that many today who admit and allow that our media and government has been blatantly lying to us for decades, yet form their opinions, take a stand on the conflict based solely on "information" provided by the media and the government.
Also I'm not ready to sell short on President Trump's efforts to create not a ceasefire but peace in Eastern Europe in our times. He's pulled many rabbits, not chickens out of hats as well as proving he's able to DOGE a pullet.
Hey I'd love him to pull it off, I just think he's not going to succeed based on how Russia has ignored previous deals. See the Budapest deal when Ukraine denuclearized and the Minsk accords. Russia is like Hamas. They plan to break ceasefires when the think they can win.
Yes the US did meddle in Ukraine.
But I know people who were in the Maidan protests. It was a genuine revolution/revolt not astroturf. Ukraine as a whole, and now I think even the Russophone parts, really do not want to be a part of Russia.
In the period of 2014 - 2022, Ukraine committed a formal policy of genocide against Russians. Why are we even pretending to be on the side that "legalized" genocide, cancelled elections, arrested opposition leaders, outlawed political parties, banned churches, disappeared journalists, and murdered tens of thousands of their own people?
Umm I don't think that is correct and I can point to direct evidence against any claim of genocide.
If it were true that Russians were being genocided why did Russo-Ukrainians in places like Kharkiv or Kherson not welcome the Russian army with open arms? In fact it is very clear that the Russian speaking residents of the parts of Ukraine that were invaded were just as keen to fight those invaders as the Ukrainian speakers elsewhere. Probably the one thing the invasion did was unify the country and give it a singular national identity that was previously mixed and confused.
I don't know as for Lugansk Oblast, but as for Donetsk Oblast, and especially Zaporhizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts, you're way off, in fact there's a sizable partisan resistance movement going on. Same for Odessa - all Russian speaking. Ukraine is continuing a War of Independence from Russia which started when Ukraine declared its independence from Russia in 1991. Russia colonized Eastern Ukraine under Catherine the Great in 1783, there was a brief period of independence under Nestor Makhno, from 1918 until 1922, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took Ukraine back into the Soviet sphere - as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - maintaining at least a fiction of autonomy. The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (consisting of Russia and its colonies to the east), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic were all founding charter members of the UN, and the successor states were signatories to the Belovezha and Alma Ata treaties which established the Confederation of Indepeendent States around 1994 or so - in which Russia agreed to respect and uphold Ukraine's 1991 borders... Ukraine, after the Russian invasion, prohibited the teaching of Russian in schools, rather like what happened in the UK in the First World War as to the German language - but the only genocide in Ukraine was the Holodomor in 1932-1934 in which nearly 6 million Ukrainians were starved and shot to death by the Russians. The Ukrainians have committed no such genocide against ethnic Russians. Perhaps you should read non-Putinist history... and what Mr Turner said was spot on and true...
Spot on regarding politics internally in Russia. I think Putin knows that Russia will need a period of peace and because of this wants something that can be span as a costly victory, but no more than an portion of Eastern Ukraine that will require a big army presence to pacify.
What was meant to be a short snappy, shock and awe war where most of the Ukrainians simply gave up or were bypassed has turned into something on a larger scale than Vietnam or the Second Boer war for Russia.
The common people and the military have made huge sacrifices, and this will need to be rewarded. The massive shortcomings in the war will be motivation to clean the stables, and those who fought in it will be the primary beneficiaries.
The man who succeeds Putin isn't a silovik or bureaucrat in a top position, but a mid ranking officer in his late thirties who feels like the only sane man in his section of Donbass trench lines. He's ptobably already got a few political or business connections but a modest enough background to seem like a man of the people.
I'll be honest. If you read the Xitter posts of Trent Telenko and people he reXeets as well as prune602 on blusky I'm not sure that Russia can recover from this quickly.
They've had WW1 scale losses of 20yo men in a population that lacks children. Ukraine isn't much better but they have at least lost fewer and many have been older so it's more spread out
Also their economy is hosed. Everything has been diverted to the war effort and I don't think anyone is going to do a Marshall plan to reconstruct - unless the PRC does something in exchange for Siberia. This is a possible, but you can be fairly sure the Chicoms will cheat on the deal and Russia can't object. OTOH Europe likely will send something to help Ukraine reconstruct, plus Ukraine seems likely to be selling drone tech to them and to anyone that has money so there's be trade as well as aid.
All good points, I'm not on Xitter or bsky but I'll have a look at those people.
The population loses are pretty catastrophic for both sides, Ukraine through flight as well as military casualties. I wonder how many will return when it's over. Interesting to see the conflicting approaches to mobilisation. Ukraine with full drafts but avoiding the youngest, Russia with heavily encouraged volunteers, partial drafts of the young (especially minorities and the rural poor) and prisoner/mercenary use.
On the economy, I think a failure to 'win the peace' could cost the regime heavily. Russia does have pretty much every natural resource, a good industrial base and very effective education system though, and even if the wider economy doesn't perform well, can enough spoils be fed to approx 1 million veterans from Ukraine to keep them happy enough and the state stable?
That is a lot more than I was aware, I assumed about 1.5 mil, based off the big publicised exodus of about 750k to a million when the limited draft call up came in plus a steady trickle before and after.
That's interesting there are a noticeable number in parts of Japan.
There is an elephant in the room regarding any Eastern European / Nordic mutual defense alliance; the need for such an alliance to have a nuclear deterrent against the possibility that "some of its (Russia's) nuclear weapons may work". The thought of Poles in control of nuclear weapons will give Germany nightmares. Personally, I think any Russian nukes that work are aimed at China (the Russians will nuke their own territory in Siberia to keep the Chinese out) but I wouldn't bet Warsaw on it.
Yeah if I were Poland I'd be having quiet words with Israel
That goes for Ukraine, too, which got conned out of its nukes - the third largest force in Europe, in 1994 by the US, UK, France, and, of course, Russia... That was the Budapest Memorandum.
Of course, we also promised that NATO would not expand eastward.
Thanks for the link. Note this - "The idea, for example, that the UK can only afford to send in 10,000 troops - and the 20,000 REMFs backing it up - is laughable - Ukraine is Europe’s second poorest country, yet it has been able to field a force of ten times that. Surely the UK as one of the world’s richest countries, with a population of nearly 70 million, nearly twice the size of Ukraine, can easily afford to do better than that. And that’s true for a lot of the countries in Europe, as witness the pathetic performance of Chris Heusgen from Germany - usually drunks just leave parties when the free beer runs out. A lot of the ex-Soviet countries are not like this, but they have a damned good idea of what is at stake, the memory is still fresh." https://streamfortyseven.substack.com/p/president-trumps-fantastic-peace (post edited to reflect population figures, which make Keir Starmer's whine about not being able to do anything look frankly pathetic...) In this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jnxrqeOYPM - replace Patton with JD Vance and the sleeping soldier with Europe, and that's a fair commentary on the current situation
Conscript Brits to fight in Ukraine?
UK could solve two problems at once by conscripting its newly arrived "immigrants." I am sure Ireland would go along with such a plan.
I doubt many would make good soldiers. But if all the young adult males in the boats were rounded up and conscripted to do something tough one suspects the numbers of such people coming in following waves would decline fast (see e.g. Trump & the Mexican border)
Yeah, it's pretty pathetic. The Dutch military in the 80s was bigger than the British is today. That was with about 18 million people in peacetime.
I did not think this when it first started, but IF reports of what the US was doing in Ukraine are even partially true, well if Russia was doing the same in Mexico, we Americans would hang anyone who stood in the way of invading Mexico to through the Russians out.
It also seems that there are many in the US and possibly the UK who are getting g rich off the international financial being sent to Ukraine.
I am not a Putin fan. I hate that he invaded, but it does seem that the U.S. was poking the bear and happy with the result.
As far as T wanting to negotiate peace with Putin, I do not think he cares if the peace is durable or not. It is to disentangle the US from the whole affair and leave it up to those in whose backyard all this is happening in to deal with it. “Not our problem, you handle it.” Kinda situation.
If pansy assed EU dipshits would rather spend their money on Green castles in the sky when they have a potential aggressor down the block, how in the hell is my duty to provide them anything? They made their bed, they can lie in it.
"... means that for Eastern Europe to be stable and able to have self determination they need to deter Russian aggression until it becomes clear that Russia no longer seeks to control them."
Hum, the same is true if you replace the word Russia with American ABC agencies, or EU, or NWO or whatever.
As is known, since the beginning I've suggested there are two sides to the story & if one wants to understand, it's needed to see both sides.
Also I find it curious that many today who admit and allow that our media and government has been blatantly lying to us for decades, yet form their opinions, take a stand on the conflict based solely on "information" provided by the media and the government.
Also I'm not ready to sell short on President Trump's efforts to create not a ceasefire but peace in Eastern Europe in our times. He's pulled many rabbits, not chickens out of hats as well as proving he's able to DOGE a pullet.
Hey I'd love him to pull it off, I just think he's not going to succeed based on how Russia has ignored previous deals. See the Budapest deal when Ukraine denuclearized and the Minsk accords. Russia is like Hamas. They plan to break ceasefires when the think they can win.
Yes the US did meddle in Ukraine.
But I know people who were in the Maidan protests. It was a genuine revolution/revolt not astroturf. Ukraine as a whole, and now I think even the Russophone parts, really do not want to be a part of Russia.
In the period of 2014 - 2022, Ukraine committed a formal policy of genocide against Russians. Why are we even pretending to be on the side that "legalized" genocide, cancelled elections, arrested opposition leaders, outlawed political parties, banned churches, disappeared journalists, and murdered tens of thousands of their own people?
Umm I don't think that is correct and I can point to direct evidence against any claim of genocide.
If it were true that Russians were being genocided why did Russo-Ukrainians in places like Kharkiv or Kherson not welcome the Russian army with open arms? In fact it is very clear that the Russian speaking residents of the parts of Ukraine that were invaded were just as keen to fight those invaders as the Ukrainian speakers elsewhere. Probably the one thing the invasion did was unify the country and give it a singular national identity that was previously mixed and confused.
None of what you stated in the comment here is true.
Ukraine, after the Color Revolution, passed a bill of genocide against ethnic Russians. This is a fact. You can quite easily find it yourself.
I don't know as for Lugansk Oblast, but as for Donetsk Oblast, and especially Zaporhizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts, you're way off, in fact there's a sizable partisan resistance movement going on. Same for Odessa - all Russian speaking. Ukraine is continuing a War of Independence from Russia which started when Ukraine declared its independence from Russia in 1991. Russia colonized Eastern Ukraine under Catherine the Great in 1783, there was a brief period of independence under Nestor Makhno, from 1918 until 1922, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took Ukraine back into the Soviet sphere - as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - maintaining at least a fiction of autonomy. The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (consisting of Russia and its colonies to the east), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic were all founding charter members of the UN, and the successor states were signatories to the Belovezha and Alma Ata treaties which established the Confederation of Indepeendent States around 1994 or so - in which Russia agreed to respect and uphold Ukraine's 1991 borders... Ukraine, after the Russian invasion, prohibited the teaching of Russian in schools, rather like what happened in the UK in the First World War as to the German language - but the only genocide in Ukraine was the Holodomor in 1932-1934 in which nearly 6 million Ukrainians were starved and shot to death by the Russians. The Ukrainians have committed no such genocide against ethnic Russians. Perhaps you should read non-Putinist history... and what Mr Turner said was spot on and true...
see my comment below...
Spot on regarding politics internally in Russia. I think Putin knows that Russia will need a period of peace and because of this wants something that can be span as a costly victory, but no more than an portion of Eastern Ukraine that will require a big army presence to pacify.
What was meant to be a short snappy, shock and awe war where most of the Ukrainians simply gave up or were bypassed has turned into something on a larger scale than Vietnam or the Second Boer war for Russia.
The common people and the military have made huge sacrifices, and this will need to be rewarded. The massive shortcomings in the war will be motivation to clean the stables, and those who fought in it will be the primary beneficiaries.
The man who succeeds Putin isn't a silovik or bureaucrat in a top position, but a mid ranking officer in his late thirties who feels like the only sane man in his section of Donbass trench lines. He's ptobably already got a few political or business connections but a modest enough background to seem like a man of the people.
I'll be honest. If you read the Xitter posts of Trent Telenko and people he reXeets as well as prune602 on blusky I'm not sure that Russia can recover from this quickly.
They've had WW1 scale losses of 20yo men in a population that lacks children. Ukraine isn't much better but they have at least lost fewer and many have been older so it's more spread out
Also their economy is hosed. Everything has been diverted to the war effort and I don't think anyone is going to do a Marshall plan to reconstruct - unless the PRC does something in exchange for Siberia. This is a possible, but you can be fairly sure the Chicoms will cheat on the deal and Russia can't object. OTOH Europe likely will send something to help Ukraine reconstruct, plus Ukraine seems likely to be selling drone tech to them and to anyone that has money so there's be trade as well as aid.
All good points, I'm not on Xitter or bsky but I'll have a look at those people.
The population loses are pretty catastrophic for both sides, Ukraine through flight as well as military casualties. I wonder how many will return when it's over. Interesting to see the conflicting approaches to mobilisation. Ukraine with full drafts but avoiding the youngest, Russia with heavily encouraged volunteers, partial drafts of the young (especially minorities and the rural poor) and prisoner/mercenary use.
On the economy, I think a failure to 'win the peace' could cost the regime heavily. Russia does have pretty much every natural resource, a good industrial base and very effective education system though, and even if the wider economy doesn't perform well, can enough spoils be fed to approx 1 million veterans from Ukraine to keep them happy enough and the state stable?
Millions have left Russia too. I think I saw estimates of 3-5M Russians but I could be wrong. It's a lot though, there are some here in Western Japan.
That is a lot more than I was aware, I assumed about 1.5 mil, based off the big publicised exodus of about 750k to a million when the limited draft call up came in plus a steady trickle before and after.
That's interesting there are a noticeable number in parts of Japan.
https://xcancel.com/TrentTelenko and https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social
also https://xcancel.com/secretsqrl123
Good article - thank you