Croatia has its hands full confronting Serbia.

Why not?

for what?

Hope you are right. If yes, seems Germans have well learnt their lesson.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...ite_house.html

TULSI GABBARD: This brings us back to the last point: Our leaders should be acting in the best interest of the American people and our country.

Unfortunately in this White House, we have warmongers and people like Jake Sullivan and Tony Binken, who had a very strong hand in being the architects of regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

They're the ones influencing the decisions made by this White House, they're stoking tension and escalating the situation that can only lead us down a more dangerous path that directly undermines the interest of the American people in our country.

Let's be real about what we're dealing with here. We're talking about the United States and Russia, two great nuclear-armed powers in the world. There is only one place that that conflict ends, it ends and destruction of this world and life as we know it. Don't be naïve or shy about pointing out what is at stake -- and that's with American people need to know. And that's what the people in the White House and leaders in the Congress of both sides of both sides of the aisle refused to tell them the truth about.

That is not simply not true, it's laughable. Putin is not an irrational player, in fact, he's quite careful in trying to avoid major military encounter with NATO.

You can get a taste of how determined he is from the examples when he miscalculates and whenever that happens, he retreats immediately. Take a look into the few skirmishes between the US and Russian semi-official forces named Wagner in Syria. The Russians decided to test the resolve of the Americans and attacked them. Within half a day, at least 200 Russians were dead, no American was killed. End of story. Another example is when the Russians tested the resolve of Turkey by flying from Syria into their zone of control close to the Turkey - Syria border and even into Turkey proper. Turkey brought down a Russian SU-24, the pilot was killed and Putin immediately backed down.


Putin has been trying to draw a "red line" for NATO expansion ever since he took office, this is key to the Russian self-defense strategy ever since NATO was formed. Ukraine happens to be the place where the "West" screwed up and can't really correct that mistake and the likelihood that we see Ukraine a NATO member within the lifetime of Putin is close to 0. This is why neither NATO will place hardware in Ukraine, nor will Putin ever enter into a conflict with NATO. He will continue harassing and testing resolve to see how far he can go, but he know he's doomed if he makes two steps instead of one.

That's some real piece of fear-mongering and hand-waving from Miss Tulsi.

Putin (Russia) is just a couple of steps away from winning the information war and that's what it matters today. He doesn't need to attack Ukraine.

She is a tool. As is Tucker Carlson.

In other developments, Germany continues to embarrass itself: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/27/germ...s-outrage.html

Makes one wonder how did that discussion go and what other options besides helmets did they consider? Like...lets send them aspirin...or why not some winter socks? With a single move, Ze Germans managed to annoy both the Russians and the Ukrainians when not doing anything would have been better.

It amazing all these hurt feelings from Putin over Ukraine being lost to the Russian sphere of influence when ( as we all know )
Germany still hasn't been completely reunified, as there's the little matter of East Prussia, thats been the Russian
enclave of Kaliningrad since WW2.

I wouldn't be so confident on the lost influence. I personally know a few people with Ukrainian passports who are mad at Putin for stopping short of annexing the whole of Ukraine. The further east you go in Ukraine, the stronger the Russian sentiment is. Don't forget, Ukraine was never really a standalone state prior to the dissolution of the USSR. There is a certain logic in the desire of Russia to have the shortest possible land border with NATO.

In the end of the day, NATO was created precisely to contain the Russians and the expectation that they would be content with being cornered has been a US policy mistake ever since Bush senior.

and let's not forget that Yanukovich was democratically elected President. So this is what happens when you do not respect the will of the people.

Bollocks.

that's the best you can come up with?

The best, I don't know. But the most appropriate.

yes. the most appropriate of the commentator. speaks enough of yourself.

Ethnic or idealogical divides within a country are inherently unstable, especially if they have a deep history. Just take the Balkans, which by the way, is equally on the brink of another civil war but unfortunately overshadowed by the whole Ukraine thing.

The irony here is if Russia takes Ukraine then they are moving closer to NATO, it will give them land borders with NATO countries Poland, Belarus, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. All of these will no doubt build up their border forces and strengthen their missile deployment.

Be careful when you talk about the "Balkans". In the end of the day, it's quite a wide geographic area with mostly stable, established states with the majority of the population living in EU and NATO countries. From roughly 60m people in the area, 45m live in EU/NATO countries and this doesn't include the countries on the path to join either NATO or the EU. The fallout from the deconstruction of Yugoslavia and the strategic mistakes done by US / EU there will continue to linger on, but it will be smaller, localized conflicts rather than widespread problems and thus, it will not have any impact on the wider area and practically no impact on Europe as a whole. For me the concern in the Balkans is actually the opportunistic behavior of Russia trying to gain a foothold there too (supplying sophisticated military equipment to Serbia or the outright coup attempt in Montenegro)



I believe Putin has no ambition to take over the whole of Ukraine militarily as this will create more problems to him and practically solve none. On the other hand, invasion of Donbas will allow him to further weaken Ukraine as I think his endgame re Ukraine is to have it weak and controlled by forces closer to Russia and thus, remaining a "safety" belt vs. NATO. His message to Ukraine is probably summarized in "as long as you maintain NATO ambitions, I will continue to harass you and weaken you"

Who can tell what Putin wants?

Nobody from these countries wants a conflict in the area. Nobody wants a Ukraine-Ru war.

We are peace loving people and would prefer to solve any conflict diplomatically.

With Putin it's easier to work the other way around: what is it that he DOESN'T want? He doesn't want NATO encroaching on him on the West as he's getting squeezed on the East from China (make no mistake, these two are only tactical allies, eventually they will clash). He doesn't want open military confrontation with NATO as this will reveal the vulnerability of his military and he will lose the leverage of threat.

So based on the above limitations, I speculate he will NOT take over Kiev, but MAY enter Donbas and will certainly continue to harass and weaken Ukraine for the foreseeable future.

Some speculate Russia would like to replace the USA as the hard-power provider as Europe's security system and Russia's "sphere of influence" from Lisbon to Vladivostok and also join on its own terms the European economic system precisely due to the growing China.
No denying that some circles in both France and Germany would be dreaming of an upgrade from a local power to a global one and they would consider a tandem with Russia to achieve that. The campaign to push out NATO from these countries would be part of it.
However, for some Eastern European countries this is, obviously, an impossible proposition, and a recently demonstrated lack of Germany and France resolve doesn't help to change that.