An airfield in the Russian city of Kursk was targeted by a drone strike on Tuesday, a day after two air bases deep inside Russian territory were hit by Ukrainian drones.
Tuesday’s attack targeted an airfield that is about 80 miles from the Ukrainian border, causing a nearby oil tank to catch fire. The region’s governor said there were no casualties in the incident.
The attacks on Monday hit targets hundreds of miles inside Russia, the deepest Ukrainian drone strikes in Russian territory since the February 24 invasion. Later on Monday, Russia launched another massive missile barrage across Ukraine, targeting energy infrastructure.
The Kremlin said Tuesday that it’s taking necessary measures to counter the attacks. “Certainly, the push for such terror attacks to continue being openly announced by the Kiev regime is a risk. Of course, it is being taken into account, with all necessary measures being taken,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Kyiv hasn’t officially taken credit for Monday’s attacks, but a senior Ukrainian official speaking on the condition of anonymity to The New York Times said Ukraine’s forces were responsible. The official said the drones were launched from Ukraine and claimed Ukrainian special forces inside Russia helped hit one of the targets. Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, also hinted at Ukraine’s involvement.
Russia has demonstrated that it will significantly escalate its war in Ukraine in response to attacks on its territory. Moscow didn’t start launching large-scale missile strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure until after the truck bombing of the Crimean bridge in October.
The US has sought assurances from Ukraine that it won’t use US-provided arms to target Russian territory, with an exception for Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014. Russia said that the drones used in the Monday attacks were “Soviet-made.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday that the US was not helping Ukraine strike inside Russia. “We are not enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We are not encouraging Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” he said.
Not really that interesting after the first ones yesterday. The US is trying to get Russia to do something stupid. Russia is stubbornly refusing to do something stupid.
This IS a good way to assure that the rest of the world unites behind Russia.
Why would the world unite behind Russia? Ukraine attacks military bases and Russia bombs cities.
You would have to ask them. Apparently outside of the US and Europe, not many people believe the narrative of what you just said.
Yes, Iran, China, North Korea, and Nicaragua.
This reflects your knowledge of geography.
Most of the world went into “USA ass kissing mode” after World War II, and the Americans bombed plenty of cities during the war.
They bombed plenty of cities after WWII. It never was much of a problem for Europe if it they were Asian or African or South American cities. Never a problem if they used chemical weapons against civilians either. If there was an instance of mild criticism about these crimes, such radicalism took place in the margins of society and ignored by our media’s purveyors of approved truth. Miles outside the Overton-window, such things cannot be part of polite conversation.
Great point… that says nothing.
Also, Ukraine launched several missile attacks against non-military targets in residential area of Donetsk today. The number is higher than usual. But they have been doing this almost every day for years.
So because US bombs cities 70 years ago it is OK for Russia to bomb cities today?
No, it is not OK. That’s why we need to end it. Which is why sane people call for ending the war, go the diplomatic route, negotiate and address the issues in a sincere and serious manner with all the parties involved.
And it wasn’t 70 years ago that America stopped bombing cities. If you follow only the Western press you might actually believe that I know, but that’s just part of the problem that leads us into the sort of disasters current and underway.
The US puppet regime in Kiev shelled Donask and Lugansk for 8 years. The people there just wanted to be left alone, raise their families, continue their own traditions, speak their own language.
The solution was the Minsk accords. But it was a scam by the Western powers and the Kiev regime as Poroshenko admited. The time was used to build a NATO trained military to subjugate the people of Donbas. Ukrainians need to get rid of the puppets and have peace restored to the people of Ukraine.
Minsk I & II were stalling tactics to allow the west to load Kiev with weapons.
The Misnk Accords were BS agreements that not even Russia honored. They too used it to buy themselves time to prepare for the larger invasion.
Ukrainians need to fight off Putin’s Army.
Circular logic. The Minsk accords were violated to arm Ukraine against an invasion that wouldn’t have happened if the Minsk agreements had been implemented.
This war is about Western antagonism toward Russia. Ukraine is just the cats paw.
Wow, that’s really deep. Did you get your degree in philosophy?
No, but I do have multiple degrees. What is your degree in besides complaining about Biden?
I know , all in Fahrenheit…
Umm Russia has already done something stupid.
You mean not retaliating against US in 2014?
If the US does not put a stop to bombing deep inside Russia, regardless of which forces actually performed the stunt, you probably will not like the result much.
Pfft Russia has been exposed as a paper bear.
Enough Americans believe this that it is inevitable that Russia retaliates in an unfriendly way.
This is just your way of maximizing the odds of Russian missiles landing in London, or in a US military base on US mainland soil.
Russia is not that stupid to fire a missile at London or attack a US military base on US mainland soil. I know you are rooting for such an action, but you should think about what happens next.
Unless of course that is if WW3 breaks out. And nothing he says, or has said, indicates he is rooting for any such thing.
IDK. This is a pretty major escalation. The pressure on Kremlin to retaliate against terrorist empire is enormous.
This seems to be very very true. I would say that over 90% of Russians are calling on Putin to escalate. The tone of the pro-Russian sites I have checked recently has definitely changed.
My ‘not very interesting’ comment seems to have described the exact opposite of reality.
The comments of people claiming that this is not a US war is another good way for Americans to smear the reputation of the US (even further), and increase pressure on the Kremlin to act more aggressively to oppose the US.
This will not turn out well for the US.
Obviously war with Eurasia isn’t in the interest of people of the USA but US is not a free country. It does not have a democratic government that reflect interests of the people. We have a parasitical, totalitarian regime in Washington.
Truth has never been such an unpalatable pill!
Major escalation? Russia bombs Ukraine bases every day and Ukraine bombs Russia back and Ukraine is escalating the war? Ukraine has some nerve to kill Russian solders and break their planes.
We never said russia wasn’t also escalating, and if it wasn’t for NATO backing Ukraine, this wouldn’t be seen as an escalation at all. But it’s easy to see how russia could view this as americas fault for giving them long range missiles. America knows this is a red line, which is why we’ve been so clear about not sending long range weapons, and altering the weapons we do send them to be shorter range. America knows an attack inside russia is an escalation, why don’t you?
Saying something is an escalation means it is likely to provoke a larger response, which it did. It doesn’t mean it is unjustified.
I suspect this is the work of British Intelligence. It weakens the case for the US to send longer range HIMAR missiles. Also, the British Ministry of Defense didn’t waste any time saying that they expect it will cause finger pointing within the Russian command structure.
This could very well be true. UK bombing Russia gives Russia a causum bellum for bombing London. The pro-Russian sites are … not happy. I hope that the Kremlin shows restraint. It will get more and more difficult for Russia to not respond if the US does not put an end to these types of attacks.
Ukraine seeks to expand the war, to pull in more help from NATO.
These strikes are done to provoke.
Will the Russians be provoked? Well, the whole war is them finally being provoked by a long course of poking and prodding. So it could happen.
However, Russia’s advantage is from destroying Ukraine, not from getting more help to Ukraine. So they’ll probably stay out of strikes on Poland and Romania, unless the support coming from there gets so serious they can no longer ignore it. It is the same calculus as the US Neutrality Patrol in 1941 against Nazi submarines in the Atlantic.
”
“Russia’s advantage is from destroying Ukraine. . .”
So the war to “liberate” Ukraine from an exagerrated Nazi threat is now a war to destroy the nation and its people. Putin can’t accept defeat so he has now gone to war against the Ukrainian nation. Sad. I expected better from him. He no longer has a plan. Within a few days of his phony annexation of the four oblasts, he was forcibly removing the people of Kherson before retreating across the Dnipro. This is a busted plan and the man is flailing at straws. The war will end when Russia gets a leadership that can accept that Putin led his country to an unnecessary defeat that only accelerated the decline of the Russian Federation.
Sad to say, but it is the U.S. that cannot accept defeat, especially given the dismal record on Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Viet Nam.
The US is not at war in Ukraine. The US is supporting the Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainians are fighting for their country and their independence. The US is opportunistically using Putin’s blunder to bleed Russia. Yes, the US provoked the war. And I make no excuses for US imperialism. But Putin took the bait and led his country to this debacle.
Are you ever naive. The U.S. has been pushing for this war for a long time and is definitely a co-belligerent. The. U.S. is definitely at war with Russia. Sanctions are an act of war. The U.S. has been sanctioning Russia, trying to destroy her economy for many years now. How long do you think the U.S. would take that same treatment from another country?
How many US soldiers killed?
They aren’t reporting the deaths of Americans in the mainstream media.
That is true, one explanation is… because there aren’t any.
Another explanation is that they don’t want the American people to know the truth, which is usually the case.
While the powers that be wouldn’t want that it does get out, when the Seals strangled the Green Beret somewhere in Africa, you can bet they didn’t want that story to get out, but it did.
sure, sure. I like your silly denial. It’s cute. Facts are pretty stubborn though. Here are few of your grunts getting popped like flies.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/71YVp0SAg5DS/
Maybe the MSM is keeping US casualties secret. So how many Americans have been killed compared to the thousands of Russian casualties? This is not a US war no matter how much the Kremlin and its apologists try to spin it that way.
Timothy Griffin who recently died fighting in Ukraine has been identified as an American. I am sure there are other Americans fighting over there as mercenaries or NATO soldiers.
And thousands of nameless Russian soldiers have been slaughtered in Ukraine in the service of a regime fighting an unjust war. No comparision.
For Russia this is a just war, and for the U.S. it is an unjust war. The U.S. pushed for this war, has been funding it, training soldiers to fight Russians, and has been supplying Zelensky and his Neo-Nazis with lethal weaponry. The U.S. is a co-belligerent with Ukraine. Try listening to Scott Ritter’s recent talk at the U of Michigan a few days ago and learn something.
How can you call Zelenskyy a Neo-Nazi? Where is the evidence of that?
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Zelensky has thrown in with the Neo-Nazis. Stepan Bandera is regarded as a hero in Zelensky’s Ukraine.
Any evidence that there is any official support for these people before the SMO? Because once the SMO was in full swing there is a pretty good rationale for not discarding some of the better motivated fighters.
Any evidence that Zelenskyy has actually supported neo Nazi’s even after the SMO?
The rightwing extremists got a lot of support when the Russians annexed Crimea and supported a separatist war in the Donbas in 2014.
Little surprise they get a boost when the Russians attack full scale in 2022 – the Russian’s actions are the biggest driver for their support, while there was less active conflict they lost their representation in parliament.
I never get tired of sharing this with the BS Ukrainian Neo Nazi repeaters.
Truth hurts sometimes.
https://youtu.be/XQc6mJ7u8gQ
Repeated Russian propaganda but Ok… Hasn’t Putin thrown in with Wagner Group and other Neo Nazi linked groups? Aren’t there Russian Neo Nazis fighting Putin’s war in Ukraine?
I don’t know. Do you have to be Jewish like Zelensky to be a Neo-Nazi these days?
“For Russia and the US this is just a war.”
Fixed, no charge.
Is that Scott Ritter, the former UNSCOM Inspector and 2001 sex offender that went rogue for personal gains?
He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl.
Must have been a witch-hunt.
I do give him credit for some of his talking points just as much as I give credit to some folks here that oppose my views sometimes.
You don’t like the message so you are trying to kill the messenger.
US pushed for this war? If true, just how stupid would the Russian have to be to fall into that trap?
It’s the Americans that are stupid. Tune into Tucker Carlson Tonight.
This actually is evidence that the US is not directly involved as it shows that the news of even single volunteers is not silenced.
Thus the idea that any substantial active service men dying while in the service of their country (the US) would be very difficult to keep out of the media.
The notion that there could be a significant uptick in service men dying and not have some of the families noticing is not supported by any previous ‘wars’ and most of them were carried out in ages of much poorer communication.
Does the U.S. supply NATO with American troops for NATO’s army?
No the US does not supply NATO with American troops – the troops the US places in NATO countries are AFAIK always under US command. In some cases other NATO members have provided their troops to fight under a common NATO commander – but I cannot remember the US doing so.
The idea that there is a NATO army is a bit of a misnomer (I guess) as there have seldom been any one army – at most there have been NATO missions, but in most cases I can remember even the Danish contingent have operated as independent sub divisions under their own command – that independence is not entirely made up, though it may at times seem so.
I doubt that the US being entirely capable of forming entirely self sufficient fighting groups would ever be taking orders from a NATO army commander – though technically I guess it could happen – but perhaps US law would prevent it?
I did a little research on this. In 2022 the U.S. had the largest number of military personnel out of all NATO countries serving NATO with 1.35 million military personnel. Turkey ranked 2nd with 447,000. You can bet there are Americans all over western Ukraine and in neighboring countries ready to step in.
Yes that sounds quite likely, that however is a very different thing from the U.S. supplying NATO with American troops for NATO’s army! As these US troops are not under a non US command. So not the right answer to the question you asked. These are US troops stationed on NATO bases in NATO countries.
To you it may seem like the right answer but I assure you there is a difference.
Beats me! I just know that America is all over this Ukraine War like ugly on an ape!
Well the US is certainly a big supplier of arms and other assistance – if we measure it as share of GDP the US is however not at the top but on the 8’th place:
https://www.statista.com/chart/27331/countries-committing-the-most-of-their-gdp-to-ukraine-aid/
If you phrase the question like you did, it sounds as if NATO was somehow in control of the US troops (which is why I formulated my answer as I did) that is not the case, rather the other way around (as you also imply) i.e. if there was/is to be any direct NATO action because of what is going on in Ukraine then the US will be in the lead – not taking orders.
That is one American dead on Ukraine soil. How does that compared to the 60,ooo dead Rusians on Ukraine soil?
60,000 dead Russians? Your source for that figure?
About a 1000. Most of their corpses are burned or blown up to dust so you will not be getting back nice caskets wrapped in Yankee flag.
Why do you think the US was pushing for this war? Because a Russian invasion of Ukraine works to the advantage of the US. Putin was stupid to take the bait. And the US is not a co-belligerent. Thousands of Russian troops have died and the Russian military has been degraded. The US has not lost a a single soldier and has kept this war going by giving Ukraine obsolete ordinance and increasing profits to the MIC. Meanwhile Russia sinks deeper into a war that it can’t win.
I have no sympathy for the US or the Russian imperialists. My sympathy is with the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their families, their homeland and their right to self determination.
Give yourself a nice pat on the back for internet’s best virtue signaling comment.
“US is not at war in Ukraine”
😂
How many US troops have died in the Ukraine war?
The US combat role in Ukraine is a lot like the USSR’s role in Vietnam where the US lost 58,000 soldiers while the Russians lost 16 over a 14 year period. The Vietnamese lost about 2 million, mostly civilians.
Your example is excellent. This is a proxy war between the US and Russia, except that the US is playing the role Russia played in Viet Nam and Russia is playing the role the US played there.
I generally agree except that Vietnam was a war between the Vietnamese nation and the US imperialists and Ukraine is a war between Ukrainian nationalists and Russian imperialists. The US and USSR played supporting roles and didn’t have complete control over the nationalists they supported. It is important for us to recognize that the US cannot agree to peace terms on behalf of the Ukrainians any more than the Russians or Chinese could Agree to peace terms for the Vietnamese. Peace will only come to Ukraine when the Russians come to an agreement and the Russians leave. The US imperialists are opportunistically supporting the Ukrainian national resistance movement. But the US did not create Ukrainian nationalism and can’t control it any more than the US could control the mujahideen it supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Why are you being so literal?
“No boots on the ground” does not recuse Amerikkka’s involvement, including the supplication of weapons, intelligence ( if one can call it that) and military training for Ukrainian troops.
But, noooooo….Amerikka isn’t involved in the war 😂
I never said the US was not involved in Ukraine. The US is playing a similar role in the Ukraine war that the USSR played in the Vietnamese war or that the US played in the war between Afghanistan and the USSR.
… US puppet gov’t, with US funding (Gov’t & Military), training, weapons & supplies, tactical advisors, intel & targeting, propaganda narrative, and enforcing NATO support/(alliance). It is a war in Ukraine, but not a Ukraine war. Zelensky had to promise restoring good relations with Russia to get elected in a sham election, and the battlefield blood is not being shed by Ukrainian volunteers.
Russian short lived war (2 week invasion) has not gone well. 8 month later Russian airbases are under attack from little Ukraine. That would be like US invading Mexico and 8 months later Wright Patterson Air Base gets bombed. It is a good thing Russia does not have freedom of press because how would Russia explain this mess?
If you look at the scale of attacks in russia vs Ukraine, it is indeed exactly what I would expect if america invaded mexico (and mexico was backed by some major foreign power). We would mostly pulverize them, and they would in fact, hit some targets in america as well. We don’t hear of russians without electricity. We hear of one base being hit.
We don’t because that is not the purpose of the Ukrainian attacks – the attacks were to damage some of the bombers and an fuel depot – this would be fairly ineffective in itself, but it would force the Russians to up their defensive game at home as it exposed their inability to stop low tech attack – not a great look.
Actually it was three, admittedly very limited attacks but on military targets not electricity infrastructure – so not much risk of power supply problems. The attacks are not likely to cause much permanent damage, but the idea that the Russians launched only about 70 missiles this round does indicate that the attack was not without effect.
The Ukrainian strikes inside Russia are primarily propaganda. They are intended to bring the war to the attention of the Russian people and to get Putin’s subjects to start asking questions about. I hope they succeed.
I hope this is not the case, as I do not see this as having a better chance of more Russians asking critical questions than Russians feeling that they are being attacked.
So far the idea that this war was justified because NATO or even less believable the Ukrainians were a real threat to Russia or even less likely about to attack Russia was so far from believable that Putin has struggled to motivate the Russians to fight in his war.
I think that is more important any questions about the wisdom of the war is I would argue best provoked by the sanctions.
The sound reasons to do the attacks as I see it are:
1) get mill bloggers to question home defense
2) force the Russians to move S300/400 home
3) actually harm the fleet of very old Tu95
4) actually harm the fleet of Tu 160
3: they are very hard to replace cannibalizing old frames seems to be the way they do it now.
4: forcing new production – demands scarce resources of highly qualified workers.
Neither will supposedly do much but if the number of operational planes can be lowered just a bit it may be enough to lower the barrage size to a level that will not overwhelm the Ukrainian air defense.
I think that goal 2 is the most likely to be of any measurable value in the slightly longer term – it is a very important goal all by itself as it lowers the combat effectiveness in Ukraine of the Russians.
So I would caution the Ukrainians against actually doing much damage to other targets than those that are clearly directly involved in the war.
Having something like the Iranian low cost suicide drones (or old otherwise useless soviet era drones) that would deplete and divert Russian air defense assets without necessarily doing much damage is IMO perhaps the best way to proceed.
As Ukranians might have well learned by now, and the Russians found out very quickly, that mechanism doesn’t work that way. It never did, never does, never is going to. It always plays into the hands of hardliners and is the prime reason why false flags can be an actual thing in the first place.
The only ones I recall saying anything about two weeks were people commenting here.
OK, Wars, I’ll bite. What is your prediction for how long the war go on? And what was your prediction in February when Putin threw his tantrum?
I admit I was wrong. First, I thought Putin was too smart to invade Ukraine when it was obvious that was exactly what Biden wanted him to do. I thought the troop build up was a bluff to pressure NATO and Ukraine to give guaranties of Ukraine’s neutrality and autonomy for Donestk and Luhansk. When Russia invaded I expected the Ukrainian army to be overwhelmed by mid March withthe remnants driven underground. I expected the Russians to occupy Kiev and appoint a puppet govenment while the Uainian resistance set up a government in exile to run an underground resistance . For the first several weeks of the war I paid careful attention to what was happening to see how Ukrainian hearts and minds were alignoing and how deep the Nazi presence was in the Kievian government. Fairly soon I realized that the Ukrainians were almost unanimously rising up against the Russians and that Putins army was being treated as hostile invader sand occupiers, not lierators.
True to form of all failed imperialist warlords, Putin has been dropping the pretense that this is a war to lberate the Ukrainian people from Nazis. Frustrated by the resistance that the Russians can’t contain, Putin is waging a war of reprisals and collective punishments deliberately targeting civilians. Putin couldn’t liberate Kherson, so he deported the people and abandoned the fraudulently annexed territoryRussia’s advantage is from destroying Ukraine. Putin is a lot like Nixon in Vietnam. Defeated but unable to admit defeat, he is flailing about trying to find a magical silver bullet to save face.
The war is over. Has been over since the Ukrainians fought back withcourage and motivation. Putin’s goons may be able to drive the Ukrainian army underground, but like a reactor that has melted down the Ukrainian hearts and minds have irretreviably turned against the invasion and the Russians will eventuirally have to leave in defeat. Ihave seen this scenario play out over and over again when powewrful imperialist powers get defeated in wars of aggression agaisnt small nations. The US is the worst of the imperialist powers. But the US is not the only imperialist power. Even if the US abandoned Ukraine, the Ukrainian people will fight on until they drive the Russians out.
So that is my prediction and my apology. What do you predict? How long do you think this war will take. And was it worth the cost?
I made my comment because the poster implied Russia had thought this would be a “2-week invasion”. I have been steering clear of your comments because I respect you as being truly antiwar. We agreed about Russia’s security concerns. And yes, Putin took the bait, but it was inevitable. I didn’t want war and I still don’t. But until those security concerns are addressed with diplomacy, I see no end. Unless it’s the end for us all.
Of course Russia thought it would be a quick victory lasting 2 weeks. As general rule you don’t send your tanks into battle with only enough fuel supply to last for 2 weeks if you think the war is going to last longer.
And that’s what Russia did? Did they pull into some Ukrainian filling stations when week 3 arrived?
OK. But how long do you expect the war to go on? Another 10 months? Another 10 years? Maybe longer? How long? Is this another “Forever War?” And exactly what is the mission?
I haven’t a clue. I guess it depends on how long the US can convince Ukrainians to keep on dying for our MIC. The mission remains the same I would imagine. The US backs off with the constant provocations. Those provocations you yourself admitted that the US put out there to bait Russia into invading. But you seem to think the minute Russia took the bait that the mission changed to strictly imperialistic in nature.
You are kidding I hope.
You are right there. The US would go about it quite differently. They would not be as constrained as Russia is and they wouldn’t regard Mexicans as sort of kind of equal to Americans. There would not be one stone on another after a 2 weeks of American rage in Mexico and the dead would be tallied in numbers of millions. No super power would provide Mexico with weapons or even dare to send token humanitarian aid and no alliance of ever so slight significance would guarantee the safety of Guatamala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, Colombia or Venezuela. The supremely civilized West would, almost instinctively by now, react by politely looking the other way.
And completely absent from the equation would be the first whisper of any kind of sanctions on America.
The US did attack Mexico once upon a time. It found out Mexico is a very large and technically savvy rich north American nation in Latin America, which collectively knows what the US is up to.
I know it was when the US stole Texas. That was a very different US in a somewhat different time. Shortly after that they expanded their ambitions and decided they wanted to end all wars. Huge success that was.
The Texas annexation preceded and was a major trigger (for the US, Mexico’s reluctance to accept that was essentially an excuse) for the war. And the spoils of that war of choice included what are now California, Nevada and Utah, and parts Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. It amounted to something like half of the total territory of pre-war Mexico.
All those places you mentioned were the private property of Maximilian, Mexico was also his private property.
Maximilian was made “emperor” years after the war on Mexico that resulted in the loss of those territories to the US.
You are correct; Sixteen years.Even so; this is brief in the life of nations. I don’t believe the first nations of California thought of themselves as part of Mexico— the Chumash, for example.
Right, but how does that relate to the acquisition, by force of arms, of those lands by the US? Or did you just intend the Maximilian reference as a standalone observation?
No, I was off by 30 years or so. My point is that Mexico claiming to own the rest of Spain’s colonies is not a logical reason for northerners to feel that California was stolen from Mexico.
Got it.
Nice. The more Russians get bombed, the more helpless they look against the Imperial of Ukraine.
All it does is solidifying Russian public opinion on war. At the beginning of war an idea to destroy energy facilities of Ukraine woukd have been shocking, Now, majority is for tighteng war effort to not allow Ukrainian military having all the conveniences of electricity and rail infrastructure for their operations. For Russian leadership it is absolutely critical to have a firm support by public. This is why all decisions tend to be a following indicator indicating public moon. Russia like alm other countries have infrastructure of foteign opinion makers at all times influencing publuc opinion. Those are now sidelined in Russia. That deinitely eas not the case at the beginning of conflict.
From the few pro-Russian sources I checked out, you seem to be underestimating how enraged the Russians are.
From what I can tell, the pressure on the Kremlin to escalate will be difficult for them to resist.
Putin just can’t understand that the Ukrainians will fight back until the Russians leave their country. His phony crusade to liberate Ukraine from a nonexistent Nazi regime has only inflicted misery on the Ukraine, hardship on the world and accelerated the collapse of Russian imperialism. The simple fact that the Ukrainians are continuing to fight back after 10 months is evidence that the Russians have lost. Like Hitler, LBJ, Nixon, Bush, Obama and Brezhnev, Putin responded to resistance with escalation which only strengthened the resistance. Putin lost the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. Like LBJ and Nixon he is escalating to criminal brutal measures deliberately targeting the civilian population. These are collective punishments meted out by imperialists like the US and Israelis regimes that mobilize and unite the victims and strengthen the resistance. Russia is now fighting a forever war that can only end when Russia gets a leadership that will end Putin’s folly and withdraw from the Ukraine.
Ukraine will threaten Russia, more and more, again and again, until it is finally destroyed. That is coming.
So much for liberating Ukraine from an exaggerated Nazi threat. Every imperialist war has a noble sounding excuse. And when the invader can’t win the hearts and minds of the invaded they end with escalation feeding resistance leading to the invader’s ignominious defeat.
You missed that it was the US Regime change coup that set this debacle in motion. Russian involvement was AFTER that coup. The US and the EU claim that they are supporting a freedom loving democracy is a sick joke. Ukraine is a despotic and oppressive state.
BTW, where is that missing $20 billions? How much was stolen from the EU also? Criminals!
Russian involvement in Ukraine goes back to the first Czar’s proclamation that he was ruler of “all the Russia” including Ukraine. Russian involvement continued to when Catherine the Great’s armies captured all of Ukraine and the Czars attempted the forced assimilation of Ukraine. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century the Czars outlawed Ukrainian language, literature, culture, religion and even outlawed Ukrainian names. For centuries Ukrainians have resented Russian oppression that continued into the days of theSoviet Union when Stalin forcibly collectivized krainian agriculture and instigated a famine that starved hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Ukrainians.
The Euromaidan Coup was just one bump in a long chain of events going back centuries. I thought Putin was smart enough to understand the folly of Russia invading Ukraine. But he did it and now he can’t accept how it backfired.
How does any of this pertain to the US backed coup in 2014?
You can play history games
He’s bad at history, though. The first “Tsar of all the Russias,” Ivan the Terrible, came to power and ruled during a period when there was nothing like a Ukrainian state. Depending upon specific years and places, areas now part of the cobbled-together “nation” of Ukraine were then part of the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the “Zaporozhian Host” (Cossacks), and so on.
“Ukraine” means “the borderlands” and there’s a perfectly obvious reason that those borderlands were, until quite recently in their long history, referred to in English as “the Ukraine.”
Ukrainians date their nation to end of Kievan Rus. in the 13th century. Their conflict with the Grand Duchy of Moscow a/k/s Russia goes back almost that far. The existence or non-existence of a nation is a martter of self determination. If the people consider themselves a nation and have a distinct territory, then they are a nation. Ukraine is no more cobbled together than the United States, the Russian Federation, Germany, the UK, France or Italy. Yes, like many modern nations, Ukraine was partitioned and ruled by foreign overlords through most of its history, None of that undermines Ukrainian national identity which is asserting itself now in the face of Russian aggression.
Yes, some Ukrainian nationalists do. And it’s a fantasy.
There wasn’t even a general concept of nation states in the periods to which you refer. And even if there had been, the assertions of modern Ukrainians that a Ukrainian nation existed from some vaguely-imagined point sometime between the 13th and . . . 16th century (?) is just not supported by the evidence of history.
And to talk about a distinct territory is just silly. Lots of people and rulers had distinct territories in various places, at different times, throughout the relevant history. The people, boundaries, rulers, languages, everything shifted and changed almost endlessly and often one or all of those things overlapped. That said, there was nothing during that period, or for a very long time thereafter, that could be considered a Ukrainian nation (again, leaving aside that nation states mostly just didn’t exist then).
I have long list of historical maps of what is now (or was before February 2014) Ukraine stashed away, and a long list of URLs where various people and entities have posted maps depicting their research or intended to make some historical or political point. Here are a couple:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ukraine/images/map-1400.jpg
http://www.e-ir.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/map-1.jpg
If you can’t figure out the historical context of this war I can’t help you. It did not begin in 2014 or 1991.
Need I remind you who invaded who?
Ukraine threatening Russia? Get out of here.
Better idea: The America and the EU people will recognize their governments are not representing the interests of their populations. Withdraw their support of the corrupt and repressive Kiev Nazi infected regime.
Take a look at the video of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and other U.S. Senators pumping up the Ukrainians to fight Russia by promising them all kinds of military help.
I saw it many years ago. John McCain did look a little uncomfortable.
Yes, he probably knew that the Grim Reaper was coming for him soon.
You just cut and paste this stuff?
Great summary capture. Fairly objective if you ask me But wait for it… Enter the usual US haters.
You already entered. YOU are the one cheer leading US actions that harm the US and turn a large part of the world against the US.
In comments discussing articles about India continuing to buy as much Russian product as can be delivered, Americans angrily discuss the need for sanctions against India and sending Indians working in the US back to India.
This is your side intentionally sabotaging the US by driving India right into a more solid alliance with Russia and China.
Your side has already united Russia and China. Now you are adding India to their alliance.
Wow. Russia and China uniting, not going to happen in any true sense for any period of time. As for India heading to Russia, that will not happen either.
It has already happened. India not yet 100%. But it seems to be moving in that direction.
A very large segment of the Earth’s population are getting tired of being told what to do and how to live by the western hegemon.
I think you have absolutely no idea whatever how obnoxious your point of view looks to people interested in making their own decisions on how to live, socialize, what laws to form, what to believe….
And I am sure you have no idea how obnoxious you are. Question who do like to complain about more, Biden or me?
Your Fahrenheit degrees at work.
I read this on RT news. Not even Russians believe this BS.
Good regurgitation of the garbage being shelled out on an hourly basis by once respectable western journalists. Thing is there’s this thing called history and there are enough of us still alive who lived through it. You’d have to kill us all off to validate the fairy tales you spew here daily.
You have your view of history which is distorted by your well known Anti-America views. Too bad it does not agree with the real world.
Seriously, Kenneth, if you imagine that the views you define as “Anti-American” are out of sync with “the real world,” you are, like so many arrogant Americans and not a few other Westerners, deeply confused about what constitutes “the world.” It’s a dangerous confusion. I mean that. Dangerous.
“His phony crusade to liberate Ukraine from a nonexistent Nazi regime has only inflicted misery on the Ukraine, hardship on the world and accelerated the collapse of Russian imperialism.”
What is your real reason for hating Putin? Could it be because Putin has clamped down on GLBTQ propaganda aimed at Russian kids?
I’ve seen the pictures of the Neo-Nazi soldiers in Ukraine with their Nazi tattoos and Nazi emblems on their uniforms. If you don’t think there is a strong Neo-Nazi force in Ukraine, then you are being purposely obtuse.
Putin is a dictator, an imperialist and a Russian chauvinist. But I have supported some of Putin’s positions when opposes US imperialism. So when Putin opposes sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, I support his policies. But when Putin launches a war of aggression against the Ukraine I see it for what it is and condemn Putin’s war.
There are neo-Nazis in all the Slavic countries, including Russia. But the ultra right party got less than 2% of the vote in the last Ukrainian election. Zelenskyy is hardly a Nazi and he opposed the ultra nationalists when he ran.
Statements like this reveal an abysmal misunderstanding of reality. (Well, maybe he’s guilty of just a smidgen of Russian chauvinsim.) When you demonstrate that you don’t grasp the fundamentals, it’s difficult for people who actually know what they are talking about to take you seriously.
You might consider the possibility that, often, you are engaged here simply because there are many more readers than there are participants in these discussions and some of us think it important not to permit your nonsense to be fed to them unchallenged. We don’t actually think there’s much chance that you will accept that you are misguided and need to undertake remedial study of reality.
I have been commenting here for many years because it used to be an anti-war site before it got hijacked by apologists for Putin’s imperialist war.
Do you seriously contend that Russia is not a dictatorship where political dissent is outlawed? People are even sentenced to prison for calling the SMO a war. LOL
Isn’t it wild? The complete disconnection with reality amazes me. I never thought until 2016 or so that so many people would be so very willing to deny what they can hear and see, if doing so fits their agenda.
Zelensky ran on the platform of wanting to fulfill the Minsk Accords and have better relations with Russia. Once in office the little worm turned. He’s a puppet for the U.S. and the oligarchs. If you think there are no neo-Nazis in Ukraine you are really deluded. You need to open your horizons and quit following the official narrative on Ukraine and Russia. I suggest you check out some foreign news correspondents to get a more accurate picture. You just can’t trust our State Department, MIC, and controlled news media.
“War is the continuation of policy with other means.”
“Drone Attack Hits Another Air Base Inside Russian Territory The attack caused a fire at an airfield in the city of Kursk”
Russia asked for negotiations in 2020 and 2021. Russia asked for negotiations up until yesterday.
Now since Zelensky is responsible for drone strikes deep inside Russia : Russia is done asking for a diplomatic solution.
Now Russia is going to negotiate with a full scale military assault on Ukraine. To bad so sad but Ukraine is about to become dust and it will be swept into the dust bin of history.
Carl von Clausewitz had many aphorisms, of which the most famous is “War is the continuation of policy with other means.”
Ukraine doesn’t exist as a sovereign state. It ended in 2014 with a violent coup. What we have today is occupied territory.
A Neocon/Nazi colony.
That is just plain stupid.
Yes, it’s turning out to have been very stupid. It’s led to an unspeakable disaster for Ukraine, and it’s not even close to over.
Plain but not stupid. It was a very good move to occupy Ukraine in 2014. Anglo-American empire gained a perfect killing ground. Kremlin shown weakness by tolerating such impudence. Both London and Washington should have paid a very heavy price for invasion of Kiev. Problem with Kremlin is they are pacifists and always try to negotiate peace. You can’t negotiate with terrorists. These barbarians only understand the language of brute force.
Washington=barbarians.
Agree 100%.
During the deep penetration of Russia and drone attack evil witch Victoria Nuland number 3 in the US State Department was meeting with Zelensky in Kiev. There is your smoking gun. America once again attacking Russia through their proxy Ukraine and hiding their disgusting deeds.
OK, this is Ukraine (US) answer to the noises of peace negotiations. With elections over, beocons are riding high. Voters hust gave them the blank check!
Well, on to next phase of escallation.
I think it’s most likely that this is another attempt by the Kiev coup regime to escalate to the point that US-NATO will feel compelled to intervene directly. Apparently, they have overlooked decades and decades of history during which the US has routinely abandoned its ostensible allies when the going got too tough or the noble American leaders simply lost interest when profits for the MIC proved insufficient.