Putin starts “military operation” on Ukraine

[Jamesc]

Russian soldiers rioting not wanting to be canon fodder on the front line. 

 

[Playtime]

On 11/14/2024 at 7:41 PM, Sosaria said:

Share critical natural resources with US? Sounds like just replacing a would-be occupier with another one

Not exactly ...

Crimea and eastern ukraine annexation happened because O&G was found in the late 90s. Enough to eat into Russian share of western market. 

Ukraine refused to "share" with putin and instead signed deal with British firms. The moment they try to drill... it all started. 

Ukraine will gladly sell to US EU, that was the plan all the time. 

[Ender]

Russia just launched one of the biggest missile strikes on Ukraine just today. Is this not escalation? And yet the Biden is more concern that Ukraine do not escalate. I would not know if Trump is better or not. Likely not. But Biden is certainly doing alot of harm even while giving out aids. The frontline collapse says it all.

Russia is now intensifying before Trump administration calls for the talk. Putin also wants alot more bargaining chips and lands before he is ready to sit and talk.

 

 

[Wt_know]

On 11/17/2024 at 5:33 PM, Ender said:

Russia just launched one of the biggest missile strikes on Ukraine just today. Is this not escalation? And yet the Biden is more concern that Ukraine do not escalate. I would not know if Trump is better or not. Likely not. But Biden is certainly doing alot of harm even while giving out aids. The frontline collapse says it all.

Russia is now intensifying before Trump administration calls for the talk. Putin also wants alot more bargaining chips and lands before he is ready to sit and talk.

sleepy joe is sleeping till Jan 25 to handover the throne seat liao ... 

he is more concerned to eat well sleep well ... 

Edited 10 hours ago by Wt_know

[Ghgan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/opinion/ukraine-trump-election.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aU4.NVsh.1MnI7vrAvXY3&smid=url-share

The residents of Kyiv have not slept properly in more than two months. Most nights there are Russian drones, and sirens sound from early evening until late morning. We know that during an air raid we should leave our beds and go into the halls to get away from the windows, but sometimes, these days, we just pull the covers over our heads.

On the night of Nov. 5, I didn’t sleep at all, but it wasn’t because of air raid sirens. When it seemed clear that Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidential election, the mood on Ukrainian social media and among friends turned overwhelmingly negative (when it wasn’t outright disbelief: My publisher, who lives in Kharkiv, insisted for more than 30 minutes that something was surely wrong with the data).

The war was effectively over, people said. Mr. Trump would halt all American military aid and Ukraine would be forced to cede large swaths of territory to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. I told myself that Ukrainians have a tendency toward pessimism. That Ukraine is the front line against Mr. Putin’s project to make Russia great again, a project that is certainly incompatible with Mr. Trump’s. Surely Mr. Trump would decide that it is in his interest to thwart Mr. Putin and act decisively. But my mood, too, eventually tumbled to dark places.

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In the morning, I went to work in the French bakery around the corner from our apartment. I drank coffee and served customers pancakes with mincemeat and sour cream, and pastries filled with spinach and cottage cheese, while my mind returned over and over to the question: What happens now? I imagined I saw the same question on the faces of the people who came in.

In Ukraine, there is safety in simply trusting that the worst will happen. To dare to hope has always been the risk.

“What good things have I seen in my lifetime?” our 87-year-old neighbor Grandma Anya likes to say, with a solid fatalism that’s built on being born soon after the famine of the early 1930s to parents who had lost three children; on watching her savings, like many others’, become worthless right before the breakup of the U.S.S.R.; and on the steely hand from Moscow that has grasped at the heels of Ukrainians as we’ve strained for democracy, Europe and the rule of law.

In the past few years, however, there have been moments for hope. Like in the spring of 2022, when our army routed Russian forces from the suburbs around Kyiv and then took back nearly all of Kharkiv region, in the north, in the fall. There was a confidence then that Ukraine had earned the support of allies and that together we would repel Russian aggression.

But we’re tired. Some troops on the front lines have gone without leave for many months. Some in the east are falling back more than a mile a day at times. This week it snowed. The cold season is beginning, and with so many power stations already destroyed, the prospects for the winter are bleak.

We read that Russia is burning through men and matériel, but also that it has harnessed its economy to serve the war and produces weapons and ammunition around the clock. That it has used fewer missiles recently not to go easy on us, but because it is stockpiling them to inflict more damage when it gets colder.

Even before Mr. Trump’s election, the West’s support for Ukraine was indecisive, and the clamor among those who think this war is simply costing too much is growing louder. “Some still want to continue sending enormous amounts of money into this lost war,” Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, told Hungarian national radio last week. “But the number of those who remain silent, and those who cautiously argue that we should adjust to the new situation, is growing.” Mr. Orban is on particularly friendly terms with America’s president-elect.

So what happens now? We wait. We wait for the publication of Mr. Trump’s plan for peace and eagerly consume the reported details of it that appear in American newspapers. We decide whether to believe the news reports that Mr. Trump had a call with Mr. Putin, or the Kremlin, which said the call never took place. We wait for Mr. Trump to tell us our fate in his own time. We decide whether to risk a hope.

[Ender]

Always late in his decision to approve critical strategies.

F16 for Ukraine, late and delay til 2 years later, and low in qty. Missed one of the most critical use for the last summer counter offensive when Ukraine went in half cocked. No air support. 

Late in giving ATACMs for strikes in occupied territories like Crimea's Seaport. After the successful use of Storm Shadow  BSF ports and sunk a submarine, then he green lit ATACMs for Ukraine

Last of the western country in giving green light to strike back at Kharkiv, where Russia are using arty support inside russia to support an offensive form the North.

Now after Ukraine lost so much of their frontline in Eastern part, and almost ending his term he finally green lit this. With their front line pushed further west, ATACM reach inside Russia has been reduced.  I don't know how much opportunities was lost because of this late decision.

Of all the western countries that support Ukraine, I feel Biden has done the most damage to Ukraine as well giving the most. Waste of US tax money if he deliberately or due to incompetence makes his aids to Ukraine ineffective. But I think it's the latter. 

 

 

 

Edited 33 minutes ago by Ender