Ukraine v Russia II

Relax everybody....I just spoke with someone who says he is a NATO country diplomat and he insisted the other NATO country diplomat was full of beans!

 

To be fair. Is the "diplomat" wrong? NATO just said they conducted an investigation and have determined that the missile strike was the result of an errant S-300 AA missile fired from Ukraine that missed its target and Zelenskyy just said he didn't believe them and would only trust if it came from a Ukrainian. That's not exactly a good response to people that have been sending them billions in money and equipment to help them.

On the other hand, I can understand where he is coming from. He was seemingly on the verge of having NATO finally doing something militarily so that it wasn't just Ukrainians doing the fighting and dying and, just a day later, that got yanked out from under him.

 

This is P&CE.....need I say more?

 

Gotta be honest….I was hoping for Article 5 too.

We were [emoji108] thiiiiis close….give it time

 

Even if it was proven to be a stray Russian strike, there's a zero percent chance that NATO would have taken direct military action in response.

 

Yeah, that's the point. If the russians roll their tanks or launch multiple missiles over the border into a NATO country in a clearly coordinated attack THEN article five would be invoked but, otherwise, it will be taken as a provocation and a measured response will be given dependant on the nature of the action.

 

Er... well, I can't say as I'm looking forward to dying in a nuclear holocaust but, y'know... maybe that's just me.

 

It was actually much more innocuous than that….he said if it’s ours by all means we should apologize…but we’d kinda like to see the data you have showing that it was ours. A pretty reasonable request.

 

Yea so I don’t subscribe to automatic nuclear holocaust nor nuclear blackmail

 

Putin’s greatest fear is dying. He wouldn’t start a nuclear war as even he knows where that leads.

 

ATM we're doing what we need to do. We're backing the Ukrainians to fight for their own country and helping them with everything they need to push the Russians out. That seems fine to me.

If the Russians DID attack a NATO country, (a big 'if' as it stands), then I'd support taking appropriate measures to hit them back.

For instance, if they clearly launched missiles across a border hitting Poland or any other NATO country then I'd accept firing missiles back across their borders and hitting the sites where they were fired from or, in the absence of an obvious target, (if they were launched from mobile sites for instance), then hitting sites of similar type and worth as they did seems appropriate.

But our actions need to be proportionate IMO. That's all I'm saying.

 

Maybe? As the picture Bo posted, Poland is yanking at the leash begging to be let loose. Even if it was an errant missile, if it had been Russian, they were going in.

If you prefer professional wrestling terms, Poland is at the corner pounding the mat and screaming “Tag me in! Tag me in!”

 

That’s odd, since there’s nothing in history to explain why the Poles would be eager to kick some Russian ass.

 

We're starting to get lots of images of the equipment Russia left behind as the left Kherson. There's a lot, but almost everything has seen damage from artillery / drones / accident to various degrees taken in the weeks, maybe months, before. It seems that if it could move, Russia took it across the river and if it couldn't, they left it. But it's still a lot of stuff the Russian army will never see again.

Or maybe they will. Ukraine is pretty good at fixing things.

 

Some of the recently captured Russian soldiers were sporting Iranian body armor and helmets. One of the few things the Russian people could take pride in was their military export industry. It's quite a blow to the ego to have to import such things now.

I wonder if the Rouin-3 ballistic vest is good against blows to the ego.

 

Dzhankoy is the key transit hub in north Crimea. It has an airfield and probably lots of military supplies of all kinds. Despite being 160km from Kherson, it was hit by Ukrainian drone attack today. I have no idea what was hit, but the fire is massive and it's been continually exploding for hours.

 

Wicked Witch of the East bro!

 

I'm not convinced Putin is very keen on murder-suicide, but I guess it's better not to find out for real.

 

The thing is most wars sometimes don't start because people make a conscious decision. They often start because people screw up.

I've mentioned this before on here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_Days_(TV_series)

It's worth watching anyway.

 

Zelensky is still disagreeing with the White House and NATO's conclusions while Poland is in agreement

“No sign of intentional attack” as missile hits Poland, says Polish president

Andrzej Duda says blast “very likely” caused by Ukrainian air defence

Follow updates https://t.co/yDx1c3cRYz

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 16, 2022

 

I think his greatest fear is sending the rest of his life as a gas station attendant in Saudi Arabia.

 

If that happens, it'll be his own fault. He changed the dynamics of Russian government where it's again possible that a leader will be killed on the way out.

After Stalin died, there was a gentleman's agreement among the leadership of the USSR that if you lost a power struggle, you wouldn't typically be taken out back and shot. You could retire quietly to a dacha somewhere. That allowed the USSR to be more stable than most other authoritarian regimes. Putin shook up a lot of things in the Russian status quo, and it would be darkly humorous if that comes back to bite him.

 

Another sign of multi-polarity, BRICS+ is increasingly less concerned by sanctions and Cuba isolation seems to be coming to an end.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel embarks on a rare international tour of Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China seeking support for the communist island https://t.co/vG4MImzmjo

— Bloomberg (@business) November 16, 2022