Russia invades Ukraine again?

[macdoc]

and it all goes back to the US panicking when they thought Russia was ahead in the arms race.
At the time when Russia had only 4 working weapons.
Maybe someone should have listened to OPPY.

[Tero]

Could Putin take Kyiv?

Here is where the fears of Zelensky and Trump may align. Ukrainians have long said that if they make a deal to end the war now, Putin will simply rest his army, restock and come back for the rest of Ukraine later.

Trump has repeatedly criticized President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal. Trump likely doesn’t want a similar legacy: a Russian takeover of Kyiv that lets Democrats say that he lost Ukraine. Republican defenders of Ukraine, a dying breed, argue that Trump never likes to look weak and won’t settle for a deal that gives Putin a free hand. But it’s hard to envision that Putin would make a promise to stay away that Kyiv could count on. (Past promises by Russia to respect Ukrainian sovereignty were worthless.) So protecting Kyiv will be the most difficult, and most important, part of the Trump negotiations.

NYT

[Tero]

Putin does not sign peace deals. Maybe a cease fire.
Biden Has a Pair of Gifts for Trump

Dec. 12, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET

By David French

NYT Opinion Columnist
But Russia is hardly ascendant. To better understand its plight, I spoke once again to Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. Fred is the director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, and Kimberly is the president of the Institute for the Study of War, which produces daily assessments of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Russian losses are immense, Fred Kagan told me. Russia is spending down its cash reserves. It’s losing 35,000 to 45,000 men per month to death or serious injury. It’s also losing around 100 tanks per month.

While the men are theoretically replaceable (Russia’s population is far larger than Ukraine’s), “Putin is very unhappy about another mobilization,” Fred said. He’s reluctant to order another round of conscription. The Russian elite and the residents of Russia’s most prosperous cities have been largely protected from the war so far, but they can’t stay out of the conflict indefinitely if Russian losses continue to mount.

And, crucially, the fighting in Ukraine helped weaken Syria. This was perhaps the most surprising aspect of my conversations about the present situation. Every expert I talked to said that Ukraine helped facilitate the fall of the Assad regime by, in Kimberly Kagan’s words, taking the Wagner Group “off the chess board.”

The Wagner Group was the mercenary army that Putin deployed in the Middle East and North Africa to bolster local allies and advance Russian interests. But when Putin invaded Ukraine, Wagner focused its efforts on taking a city called Bakhmut.
Wagner eventually took the city, but it suffered extraordinary casualties. Wagner then revolted against Putin. It seized the city of Rostov-on-Don, and its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, dispatched an armored column toward Moscow.

The rebellion failed, Prigozhin was killed two months later in a plane crash, the Wagner Group was dismantled and its functions were dispersed across the Russian state.

Hezbollah’s demise at the hands of Israel, combined with Wagner’s demise at the hands of Ukraine, meant that al-Assad was vulnerable. His own army lacked the will and the capacity to repel the rebel offensive. Our allies’ military successes had a cumulative, symbiotic effect.

Our national interest requires the United States to continue to lean into our alliances, but Trump has a lean-out approach to foreign policy, and has said he will nominate people for his national security team who seem to be far more invested in fighting political enemies at home rather than opposing enemies abroad.

I was struck by my colleague Carlos Lozada’s recent analysis of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to be secretary of defense: “He is more concerned about domestic enemies than foreign ones, and he is willing to break rules to defeat them — even the rules his potential job requires him to uphold.”

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s selection for director of national intelligence, defended al-Assad, and she has long expressed what The Associated Press politely called “sympathetic views” toward Putin’s Russia.

Trump has isolationist instincts. His son Donald Jr. and closest allies mock Ukraine. At the same time, however, Trump is far more self-interested than he is ideological, and an American retreat in Syria, or the sight of Russian troops marching in Kyiv, or an Iranian nuclear bomb would all be deeply humiliating to him. They would signal American weakness, which would signal Trump’s weakness.

In other words, Trump’s vanity may save us from Trump’s isolationism, but vanity is a poor proxy for a coherent national security strategy.

Trump is a fortunate man: He’s inheriting the conditions for profound foreign policy success. But he’s also inheriting the possibility of failure, and the troubling reality is that his instincts are wrong, his national security picks are flawed, and he may well snatch a series of terrible defeats from the jaws of extraordinary military and diplomatic success.

[Tero]

Split up Ukraine as soon as Trump is sworn in.
https://unn.ua/en/news/russia-has-creat ... es-sources

[Tero]

Putin needs Trump's help more than ever
Last week, in the midst of the latest wave of Russian bombings of apartments and markets, a leading rightwing American influencer repeated Putin’s lie that the West forced Russia to invade its neighbor. According to this influencer, by leaving open the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO at some undefined date in the future, President Biden and other Western leaders forced Putin’s hand, compelling him to embark on a campaign mass murder and destruction.

“I could understand their feeling,” said the influencer, of the purportedly beleaguered Putinists.

That rightwing influencer was Donald Trump.
***
Some Ukrainian resources, however, may be near their breaking point. The government has been reticent to conscript young people, for good reason, given the nation’s history of devastation, and Ukraine is quite literally running out of troops. On large portions of the massive front, the country has only a small infantry presence. And this state of affairs has allowed Russia to make ongoing gains of territory during recent months, even as Putin’s forces destroy apartment blocks, hospitals, and schools in Ukraine’s cities and towns.

But the cost to Russia of Putin’s continued pursuit of his nihilistic war may be nearly as grievous.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/putin-tru ... ation-2025

[Tero]

Ukraine war expanding to Europe. Cargo planes.

The goal was to send a warning: If sabotage caused a major accident, the United States would consider it to be Russian involvement in terrorism.

According to the newspaper, US officials became concerned over the summer after receiving intelligence that Russia was planning to “bring the Ukrainian war to American shores.” In other words, the White House had information that the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, was trying to place an explosive package on a plane bound for the United States or Canada.

Although the concern was mainly directed at cargo planes, passenger planes also occasionally carried cargo.

“There was a clear risk of a catastrophic failure for these to catch fire in a fully packed plane,” US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described.

In late summer, Mayorkas imposed new restrictions on cargo brought into the U.S. In the fall, he instructed the management of major airlines to do more to prevent in-flight accidents.

Behind the scenes, White House officials tried to appeal to Russia to stop the “tests.”

The New York Times reports that President Joe Biden ordered his adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns to contact President Putin's advisers, with the message that the strike, while resulting in a high death toll, would take the shadow war between Moscow and Washington to a whole new level.

The New York Times notes that the explosions have stopped. However, it is not certain whether this is due to the Biden administration.

https://www.hs.fi/maailma/art-2000010961246.html

[Tyrannical]

Trump day is Monday and Ukraine has held out, so Putin has no choice but to make peace. Hope NATO nations have their checkbook ready, as Trump will insist on far more of a massive rearmament then they had planned.

[Tero]

It was a post on a blog. Hard to follow the thread, but there is clearly some news stream manipulation by Trump and pals.

sam
13 hours ago
I think this is just scripted theater to introduce the abandonment of Ukraine and the dismantling of NATO.

The traitor has had several recent private phone calls with Putin, as recent as since election day last year.

Which Senator is tasked with transporting written letters to Putin, this time, Rand again?

And is was just announced on NPR, that the Admin, silenced ALL health related Agencies, including, FDA, CDC, HHS, NIH. All external communications were halted last night, no public announcement, and request from NPR earlier today, from Admin, has not been met with reply from admin (now 510pm PST)

[pErvinalia]

Putin has no choice but to make peace.

Why should he make peace? Ukraine is about to be defunded. It will mean he can roll through the rest of the country. There's never been a better time to invade Ukraine.

[Tyrannical]

Putin has no choice but to make peace.

Why should he make peace? Ukraine is about to be defunded. It will mean he can roll through the rest of the country. There's never been a better time to invade Ukraine.

Trump wants a Nobel peace prize for ending the russo-jap..errr.. Russo-Ukrainian war.

I don't know what he would do, but if he were to declassify and share spy satellite pics showing the Russian people how weak the Russian army is and how much it's really lost in equipment. And then remind them how many tanks, planes, ships NATO has.

“I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to five percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago,” Trump said. “It was only at two percent, and most nations didn’t pay until I came along.”

[pErvinalia]

5%? I hope they tell him to get fucked.