The Goat Pen

Becoming non-reliant on fossil fuels does, though. Green new deal!

yea, that will be cheap

...and not enough.

Russia seems to be relying on the idea that they go in, take control of the entire country in swift fashion, and then the populace mostly accepts the reinstatement of Russian controlled government, and the whole thing calms down and the Ukrainians accept "security and peace" going forward. (You might call this the 'Iraq plan').

I don't know if they are really planning on committing enough troops to occupy a hostile populace, once they 'win' vs the Ukraine regular army, assuming they do go on and do that. If I was them, I'd be pretty skeptical. This is a country where the government that Putin wants was just forced to flee the country less than a decade ago. If Ukraine actually planned for this invasion, and presumably they have since the war's already been going on for 8 years, they probably wouldn't even really plan to fight the Russians with ships and air forces and artillery, but they would just hide partisans and hidden weapons caches in every major city and put the hurt on the Russians and collaborator governments and police forces after the war was "over." I don't see a real way Russia can win against a Ukrainian populace that says "fuck Russia." There are also A LOT (like almost all of them) of eastern European countries and ethnic groups who have the general opinion of "fuck Russians" and they will almost certainly be helping Ukrainian partisans any way they can get away with. Ukraine is like 10-20 times the population size of Chechnya or Georgia.

Maybe Russia can take down the whole country and just get Ukraine to concede territory or whatever and let the Ukrainians think they won something in the end, but Russia was well on their way to annexing the most pro Russian parts of Ukraine without this invasion anyway.

reading a russian twitter feed, it doesn't appear there is much resistance

stories of Ukranian military either crossing over to join Russia or giving up, and what fighting is going on , they are overwhelmed with the Russian air force taking out their ground structures and equipment.

Russia only appears to be targeting key military targets and leaving civilians alone

the Russian Black Sea Fleet was based at Odessa before the fall of the Soviet empire, and after Minsk agreement they were kicked out and the fleet neutralized without an ice free port. Hence the value of Russian leaning Crimea, giving him Sevastopol as a fleet base. But that isn't really defensible given the surrounding geography. At the same time, as you said there is no shortage of Russian hating ex-satellite countries that Nato is only too happy to cater to and irritate Russia with threats to their expansion.


My guess is once he gets the land mass he needs to feel Sevastopol can be secure and easiliy defended, then he has no more interest in a Ukranian invasion. If NATO stays out then everything stabilizes and I can keep driving my 13mpg truck.

But what do I know - I'm just a transplanted redneck in Ohio

"they would just hide partisans and hidden weapons caches in every major city and put the hurt on the Russians and collaborator governments and police forces after the war was "over.""

So basically a Vichy Ukraine? Where's Petain (D'gaul) when you need him?

I think more Ukrainians now see their own government as corrupt and nondemocratic. Maybe it's not something they have the fire to fight for anymore.

Because I'm not seeing much resistance to Russian forces. Just like we saw the Afghan army not putting up much of a fight in the summer. I guess over the last 8 years, Russia has won the propaganda war in Ukraine.

we already knew this, but no US troops will be sent to Ukraine

I saw where Finland was like "we plan on joining NATO if there's a threat to our security"

Fuck you Finland, we are all committed to defending each other, you're saying, "Oh no, we're not interested in helping you fight like if someone attacks Turkey tomorrow, but by gawd we're gonna ask for your help as soon as someone threatens us next week"

A. Can't we just put a bullet in Putins head and
B. Pull your stocks out for a few weeks if you haven't already.

"we already knew this, but no US troops will be sent to Ukraine"

Well, some of us knew that...



Ingraham at one point mentioned a report she heard about Russian troops making an amphibious landing at Odessa. But the former president thought she was talking about American troops making a landing in Ukraine to fight Russians, and started criticizing the military for not maintaining better operational secrecy.

"You know what’s also very dangerous is you told me about the amphibious attack by Americans. You shouldn't be saying that, because you and everybody else shouldn’t know about,” Trump said. “They should do that secretly, not be doing that through the great Laura Ingraham.”

Ingraham corrected him.

“No, those are the Russians,” she said.

“Oh, I thought you said that we were sending people in,” he said. “That’ll be next.”

Fox would be doing Trump a favor if they stopped interviewing him

In 2008, Russia approached the Chicoms about dumping US bonds to destabilize the US further. The Chicoms rejected the idea.

Today, the Chicoms are led by a much more aggressive leadership structure, and Xi has made no bones about expansionist aims.

Russia and China are now in tune together instead of being at adds as they were for much of the past sixty years.

I am worried that Russia and Chicoms are acting in concert with Russia taking on Ukraine to draw attention and that Chicoms will make some sort of move on Taiwan (I don't know if the PRC has the amphibious landing and logistics capabilities to take Taiwan because reports make it sound as if that component is sorely lacking in the PLA) short of full blown invasion but of a sort that could lead to massive destabilization.

Afterwards, when the world economy is going haywire, both could then dump those bonds in an effort to destabilize the dollar to such a point that it is no longer the world's main currency.

Yes, both would endure massive economic issues, but it could be worth it to both in the long term. If China overtakes the US economically and becomes the dominant foreign economic power in Western Europe, Russia would see that the American menace was far less severe and thus allow the Russians to engage in more expansionist / power play politics because of the dependence on Russian energy. At the same time, the Chicoms would be the world's leading economic power and would be happy to use its bully position to force the world to kowtow to its bullshit.

"Fox would be doing Trump a favor if they stopped interviewing him"

I was about to say it would certainly be doing me a favor, but at this point Trump is basically a comedy routine, so let him talk...

The replies to the tweet were funny and accurate

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all jokes and personal shit aside, this has me gravely concerned

I wish you were in the grave...

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