The NATO indirectly supplies weapons to Ukraine and Russia sees it as an attempt at escalation to WWIII that might put them on nuclear alert. How did we get from an ineffective blitzkrieg to a total all out war there? No matter what move anyone makes right now it will be perceived as an aggression. OMG

Surely history tells us that a Blitzkrieg will never end well.

Actually Blitzkrieg works very well. If your opponent is stratified and unable to react quickly enough to counter, like France was in 1940 when it took just over a month from invasion to cease fire.
Ukraine, on the other hand reacted very fast and the Russians had a problem. I think that the Russians simply did not expect such a manoeuvrable response.

Germany got total war after the French invasion too.

Day 60 of invasion? If total digression is OK, well...Ukraine is like Vietnam.

Zugzwang
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang

I don't think this is a valid comparison. Zugzwang is the dilemma of having to make a move when all options are bad.

In the situation in Ukraine, nobody needs to make a move or escalate. NATO has choices, and so far plays this very carefully. The US cancelled their Minuteman tests, i.e. decided not to move. The US made clear it would not put boots on the ground. They choose the steps that they consider have an acceptable risk profile.

Easter vacations and all that, I missed these news about people isolated from Earthly concerns in the past now have to face Swiss bureaucracy. Anyone has access to the TdG Article? I cannot even find it.

https://www.watson.ch/fr/suisse/best...laries-suisses

"Lavrov was asked on Russian state television on Monday about the prospects of world war three, and his response marks a significant escalation in rhetoric, reports Reuters.

"The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it," Lavrov said. "NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.
War means war."

So it is officially a war now? No longer a special operation?

Russia has cried wolf too often with threats of nuclear and WWIII.

Well they wanted it...
If you have ever listened to Göbbels Sportpalast speech where he askes the Germans if they want total war then you realize, that it is very easy to get people to do whatever you want. The mechanics of incendiary speech like the Sportpalast Rede are the same everywhere and work everytime. Trump initiating the sixth of January is one example showing the flip side of free speech. The generic Russians not understanding why Ukraine is being so reluctant to embrace Russian liberation another.
It´s so easy it´s scary.

Well, list of proxy wars during the Cold War:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...War_proxy_wars

The most famous ones are:

1) Indochina (1946-1954) when Vietnam was called Indochina.
2) Korea (1950-1953), the one that created North and South Korea.
3) Vietnam (1954-1975), the one from the movies.
4) Suez channel crisis (1956)
5) Afghanistan (1979-1989), the one that presumably contributed to sink the USSR.
6) All other less famous dictators in Latin America and Africa supported by either USA or USSR.

However, this is not a Cold War 2022, this proxy War means HOT War.

Uff! the US is mentioned in 78 of the 105 listed.

This proxy war talk is horseshit and just serves the Russia narrative that the US is the ultimately responsible for this war. This is a Russian land grab in blatant violation of all international norms, nothing else. The fact that the US are leading the support to Ukraine does not change this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war

Understand this, all this talk about Ukrainian nazis, extremists or whatever you want to call them is a red herring considering Russia is killing Ukrainians basically because they're Ukrainians. Russia behaves like a fascist state and is accusing others? I understand they needed a pretext to invade UA and grab land but it is simply ridiculous and disingenuous to repeat their nonsense with the Ukrainian extremists and I already explained why.

Oh no-no-no, this is a proxy war and the fact that Lavrov voices this now only changes nothing. Moreover, this is a case of catastrophically failed diplomacy, including second track. This is why I said Zugzwang - at best this will end up as a frozen conflict. Unfortunately.

From: Foreign Policy of Russia and the United States:
Geopolitics in the 21st Century (2019)

How much scope is there for cooperation on issues such as nuclear safety, strategic arms control, and counter-terrorism? In a press conference that followed the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on 25 January 2019, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that no progress was made with respect to the Ukrainian crisis or the issues surrounding the INF Treaty.

At the same time, he emphasized the importance of dialogue as “the only way to address these issues” (2019). The question remains whether the relations between the United States and the Russian Federation will continue to evolve in an action-reaction cycle of economic and political retaliation. Can this situation result in military retaliation? Will present-day global multilateral institutions prevent this from happening? If not, will the abandonment of commitment to this framework lead to creation of an entirely new set of rules with chaos in the interim period? Policy choices, being the product of bargaining between political actors, reflect the balance of power between such. Thus, the biggest problem in today’s international relations is that there is no such balance due to the fact that actor constellations are rapidly changing and the relations between the actors become more complex and fluid in the face of increasing uncertainty.

__________________
If you are going through hell, just keep going.

Yep, first facebook is a terrorist organization and now Ukraine as a country.

A new low from RTR Planeta today - some so-called political analyst referred to Lloyd Austin as a 'darkie'.

That is the very insidious method that Russia is using. Thing is that Russia is not lying, but they are spinning and twisting truths, half truths and manipulating out of all proportion to justify attacking Ukraine. It’s a tried and tested method and works every time.

so putin labelled his opponents nazis to discredit them and legitimise violence against them. wonder where he got that brilliant idea from?

I think the tactic is thousands of years old.