I think that for all practical purposes, Finland is in NATO because the US and the EU will engage militarily with another invasion. That would be my guess, anyway. — frank

Verba volant, scripta manent.

Zelensky's government isn't particularly experienced in statesmanship and it needs some proper advice from someone with more experience and expertise in the field. The Israelis would be the right people for the job. — Apollodorus

That would make a nice movie. The title could be: Rebirth of Ashkenaz. Gal Gadot would play the lead MOSAD agent. She would meet with her grandma who stayed back in the shtetl...

PBS interview with Finland’s president Sauli Niinistö on the occasion of his Washington visit, Mar 04, 2022:



Looks like a balanced and lucid analysis to me, coached in careful language.

In both cases their defeat will be because of American support — frank

In a significant manner, yes, amongst many other factors. The stingers are widely believe to have turned the tide in Afghanistan. But note that the Ukrainians are receiving far more support than the Afghans ever got...

The narrative that this is bad for Russia because the Western media doesn't like Putin even more than before, may not be a true narrative — boethius

This war will likely prove a very bad move for Russia, irrespective of the technical outcome in Kiev. In any case, that is my own prognosis, and it has little to do with the press. Rather it's based on my experience in places like Afghanistan and Kosovo. The USSR got out of Afghanistan humbled and crippled, and the same will most probably happen here.

Russian general killed, Ukraine defence ministry claims
Ukrainian intelligence says major general in Russia’s 41st army died outside Kharkiv along with other senior officers

Julian Borger in Washington
Mon 7 Mar 2022 20.51 EST

A Russian general has been killed in fighting around Kharkiv, Ukrainian intelligence has claimed, which would make him the second general the Russian army has lost in Ukraine in a week.

The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defence ministry said Maj Gen Vitaly Gerasimov, chief of staff of the 41st Army, had been killed outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, along with other senior officers.

The ministry also broadcast what it claimed was a conversation between two Russian FSB officers discussing the death and complaining that their secure communications were no longer functioning inside Ukraine.

The investigative journalism agency Bellingcat said it had confirmed Gerasimov’s death with a Russian source. Its executive director, Christo Grozev, said they had also identified the senior FSB officer in the intercepted conversation.

Gerasimov took part in the second Chechen war, the Russian military operation in Syria, and the annexation of Crimea, winning medals from those campaigns.

If confirmed, Gerasimov would be the second Russian general from the 41st Army to die within a week in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. At the beginning of March, its deputy commander, Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, was confirmed by Russian media to have been killed.

The loss of top ranking officers has come at a time when much of Putin’s invasion force has become bogged down by logistical problems, poor morale and Ukrainian resistance. The failure of its encrypted communications system could be another severe blow.

Nobody here has said the sanctions and the cost of the war itself don't have immense economic impacts. — boethius

Good to know we are all in agreement then.

You guys think Russia will have no economic problem? Really?

You are indeed amusing.

Yes it is puzzling like an accident waiting to happen and someone waiting for that accident to happen. — FreeEmotion

Armchair geopoliticians and wannabe generals tend to overestimate their own capacity to predict the future and see things coming.

Whatever.

I told you about my qualifications? You must confuse me with someone else.

He's more qualified than you or I. — Isaac

How could you know my qualifications, or his for that matter? He could be just another clown, for all you know.

The truth is: nobody knows how it will all end. Nobody has a well functioning crystal ball. The Ukrainians have not lost yet, and they could go all the way to Moscow.

Christopher Chivvis — Isaac

Never heard of him. Any good?

This is a discussion forum, not an interview for an ethics committee. — Isaac

Why then, if this is a discussion forum, maybe you need to start paying attention to what other folks say, instead of insulting them?

I don't know who you're arguing against. — Isaac

Against no one in particular. I see no need to aggress you or anybody else here. I'm just discussing stuff.

All the sources I've read reveal a mixed picture that's difficult to call at this stage. — Isaac

I don't read Bloomberg, but yeah, it's confusing. The clear thing is that Putin is not winning, whereas on paper, expectations were that he would win quickly. So it is a setback for the Russians so far, if not a total humiliation.

I think the economy will evidently tank because of the sanctions. You may disagree.

Everyone already agrees Russia should immediately lay down its weapons and go home so there's nothing more to say on that front. Pointless to just keep repeating it over and over... — Isaac

Yet you keep repeating other pointless thing ad nauseam... If this particular truth is pointless to you, don't say it. Personally I think it makes sense to say the truth again and again in the face of all the liars, so I will keep on.

If you ever doubt the power of evolution to create novelty, maybe consider that there's this new virus out there, called COVID 2019, and that it did change the world quite a lot already.

I suppose the same as yours... Isn't it true that they had thousands of casualties already?

The Soviets stayed in Afghanistan for a decade, during which they incurred some 25.000 combat deaths. We're getting near that number in Ukraine after a week. Many Russian boys within draft age are fleeing their country. Soon the economy will tank. They have lost what little civil liberties they had left. It's looking rather bleak for them. It is in fact a real tragedy for Russia as well, not just for Ukraine.

So explain to me again why the ethical choice is to keep encouraging young men to throw themselves at an enemy they've little hope of defeating — Isaac

For once I agree with you. The Russians obviously can't win this one. They are being bled to death, their army is humiliated, and the country is soon going to be bankrupt. Their boys are being sent to their slaughter, or leaving the country as fast as they can, rightly so... I really feel bad for Russia. They are the aggressor but will ultimately emerge as the main victim of this war, while Ukraine will be rebuilt and integrate the EU asap.

Do you work in sales or advertising, O? — 180 Proof

No, I don't.

Any other deep interrogation of yours I can help you with?

At best, it's going to be a Pyrrhic victory. Basically, they are humiliating themselves right now, and wasting all their resources for nothing.

Then why does the comment I was responding to matter? — boethius

Because the Baltic states and Poland, for instance, can now rest assured they can beat the Russians in a conventional war, in case the Russians would feel carried away and try to take over other countries. It deflates the threat.

That's why they have some thousands of nuclear weapons in the event NATO attacks them. — boethius

Nato is a defensive alliance. It has never attacked anyone.

In any case, if the Russians can't beat the Ukrainians, they sure can't beat NATO. They would not have lasted very long against any serious western armed force. So this whole thing is quite the humiliation so far.

LOL. The 'flee or fight' system provides a capacity to decide quickly ie to chose between two alternatives for how to deal with a potential foe. If there is no choice being made, as in the case of a particle, there is no notion of 'flee or fight'. Just repulsion or attraction, and no choice between fighting and fleeing. Those things have nothing to do with repulsion and attraction. Or do you fight a foe because you are secretly attracted to him?

Fleeing and fighting in physics: black hole physics, electrical attraction and repulsion. — EugeneW

It's fundamentally different, as no decision has to be made by an electron re. its attraction to protons.

Exactly. And everywhere you can see a link from chemistry to biology, but not in the questions. Treating biology just as "complex chemistry" doesn't make sense. You are dealing with such phenomena that simply don't make any sense to treat them as chemistry. — ssu

Yes, for instance reproduction, predation and parasitism, flee or fight, symbiosis or symbolism, are concepts which have no meaning whatsoever in chemistry but are central to biology, because they presuppose a living organism, that can flee or fight, eat or be eaten, reproduce or not, etc. So the emergence of these issues in scientific discourse mirrors the emergence of life itself and tries to follow it in all its unpredictable detours and meanders.

Now when you make the leap from biology to sociology, the questions are so much different, that the answers basic biology can give hardly matter anymore. — ssu

The same applies in between any two levels. The leap between inanimate matter (chemistry) and living organism (biology) is also quite huge, and the questions asked are totally different.

And stop throwing the VDV into unsupported raids. You'd almost think a leader there must be suspected of planning a coup with how they are throwing them away. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for all the info and great insight. I could not understand this bit. What did you mean by "unsupported raids", and "throwing away"?

Another one of Chapatte's great graphic work, on the same theme:

What??? Ukrainians aren't all perfectly woke? Well then, Putin is fighting the right fight!

I call it: Trollin for Putin.

how significant is 'significant' — Isaac

You tell me... :-) Once you're done, I have other questions for ya: how heavy is 'heavy'? How beautiful is 'beautiful'?

Your second point seems to contradict your first point. And I have not engaged in any act of tribalism, thank you so much.

The leader of one of the largest countries in the world has just used the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine as a justification for war. If the best we can come up with by way of response is "shhh..." then we've lost all credibility as rational commentators. — Isaac

Rest assured that these allegations by a country waging war on its neighbour have been addressed here by rational commentators. Neonazis are not a significant factor in today's Ukraine. They are a more significant problem in the US or Russia in fact.

You know these things because you said them? — Book273

Vice versa rather, I said them because I know them. Are you not aware of these facts?

He is a brutal nationalist autocrat. He is a war monger and a mass murderer. He is funding Le Pen and has links with other European extreme right parties. And he complains about nazis?

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third-generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discrimination and the promotion of understanding among all races.[6] The Convention also requires its parties to criminalize hate speech and criminalize membership in racist organizations.[7] (wiki)

I'm saying I don't find it a credible premise (that the Trump administration and USA government as a whole was / is has more than fringe neo-Nazi elements). You are then free to argue it is credible. But if you're not motivated to, then that's the end of the argument on that point: I don't find Trump a credible neo-Nazi and you do. — boethius

But I did argue that there were obvious links between Trump and actual neonazis. Remember Jan 6? Now you are just stonewalling, not addressing the point made.

Define 'credible'.

Or then explain how Trump's neo-Nazi connection is in anyway relevant to the topic at hand. — boethius

Because by your own logic, Europe should have done something against Trump -- since you expect us to "do something" about neonazi fringe elements in the Ukraine...

not credible — boethius

You use this word a lot to brush aside arguments but are you aware of your own lack of credibility, not to mention your apparent lack of logic and coherence? How can you say "the left tared Trump with neonazi links" when those links where an objective, documented fact? Since when are we confusing facts and propaganda?

You have a big log in your own eye but fortunately, it doesn't prevent you from seeing the speck in an Ukrainian's.

A MAGA-capped intellectual whining about neonazis in Ukraine. Now that's rich!

Had the left not smeared Trump with neo-Nazi association — boethius

Trump praised neonazi groups and vice versa, for heavens sake. Your priorities are screwed. The preoccupying modern fascist leaders are Putin, Trump and co. They are the fascists who matter right now.