Explosion at foundry in Ohio, 70mi from the train derailment. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/explosion-rocks-ohio-metals-plant-local-media-2023-02-20/
Putin spent his speech accusing Western culture of being pro-pedophile and whining about the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Just an embarrassing showing as he's coming up on a year of abject failure in Ukraine.
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/...n_participation_in_nuclear/j9f2gxr/?context=3 "Now one of the misapprehensions about nuclear missiles is that they are “break glass in case of war” store-and-forget systems. Quite the contrary, they are temperamental, maintenance-heavy divas that need constant attention to keep serviceable. Unless the Strategic Rocket Service is the one shining example of commitment and stewardship in Russian service, the odds on any given warhead/delivery system successfully launching, reaching the target, and detonating are extremely low. It may well be that not a single Russian ICBM of any flavour is capable of full operational use. Where this gets interesting is that the design philosophy of strategic nuclear weapons changed over time, moving away from a “single big bomb per target” paradigm to a “multiple overlapping small bombs per target” paradigm. More, smaller bombs does more damage and makes it harder for a defender to shoot down the re-entry vehicles. But it also means more points of failure. This means that the result of a full-up “The Day After” first strike is likely to be a few small explosions spread across various cities, and a whole lot of low-order explosions with radioactive material mixed in with them - many of those at the launch facilities. This isn’t “good” in an absolute sense - it still means a lot of dead people and a bunch of environmental cleanup, and there’s no way to put a happy spin on that. But what it isn’t is the destruction of every city with a population over 25,000 people and the subsequent nuclear winter. For sure the Russians in charge of the Strategic Rocket Forces know this. Putin might not, but the trigger-pullers do. Those same people know that the Western nuclear arsenal is kept serviceable and is expected to work. And they know that a first strike involves retaliation in kind. Accordingly, any attempt at a first strike means the utter destruction of Russia, in exchange for inconveniencing the West and giving them ironclad causus belli for anything else they want to do." I am curious about the perspective here. A year in, and Putin hasn't rattled the nuclear saber much, which is and isn't surprising. If his goal is annexation, then yeah, absolutely not. The less damage they do, the less they have to rebuild, so to speak. The nuclear deterrent seems to be the main thing keeping the weapons the Ukrainians are getting relevant to this conflict (ie not capable of striking targets within Russia or doing strategic damage to Russian military sites), and Putin probably believes if the ROE is contained to defending Ukrainian territory, he can win the long game. Surely the faith in the highly technical components of a Russian military response has been shaken down to its core, and surely that logic extends to nuclear capabilities. I mean 40+ years of Tom Clancy novels predicated off of buying a nuke from a disgruntled Russian isn't based off of an entirely illogical premise. So, Putin has to be thinking tactical in response to anything that would amount to an over-reach in terms of foreign weapons committed to Ukraine, and thus far the diplomatic channels have kept that at bay. Ie, no one has cut off communications with Russia, so that should the Russian intelligence agency find out about a new weapon system given to Ukraine, they can voice their concerns. From what I can tell, Ukraine has respected this balance and not driven forward with wild offenses deep into Russian territory or rhetoric of attacking Moscow, despite both being somewhat understandable. Right now, Ukraine's hope is on Putin dying, the international community stepping tf up, or the Russian people losing their taste for this conflict in such a way that Russia goes back to pre-invasion boundaries. Russia is basically hoping that the status quo improves or continues to the point that annexing whatever pieces of Ukraine they want can be done quietly, and that the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the atrocities they will commit against Ukrainians en masse as retribution for this "embarassment". A nuke changes that math almost instantaneously, and the paltry excuse of "you gave them better guns, so we nuked them" will not stem the tide. My question is: what else changes the math behind this conflict? I heard Japan was going to commit serious resources to this conflict. If that means they are delivering capabilities that neither side is overly familiar with, it would definitely be a game-changer, but I can't imagine the US or some of the other powers wouldn't have some ability to spec out what the Ukrainians are working with, going back to that role of the diplomatic corps to ensure there's no incentive for Russia to escalate to nukes.
Really, though? Has it? I mean, to a normal outsider looking in and viewing the shit that's been going on in Ukraine, and how the Russians are just getting owned more and more, sure, it makes sense... but do you really think that is the view Putin has? Do you think that is the view the hardcore Russian population has? I kind of doubt it...
Almost every war Russia has fought has started as a shit-show. Then they throw bodies at the problem until they win or their government crumbles. As for nukes, if Ukraine loses there will probably be a limited, tactical nuclear exchange with NATO. Ukraine hasn’t pushed deep into their territory because the West isn’t giving them weapons with that capability on purpose.
Why would that happen if Ukraine loses? NATO will never fire first, and I see no reason why Russia would fire if they were winning.
As counterintuitive as it is, Russia will cause a confrontation with NATO. It’s not about just Ukraine, it’s also about Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. Their ultimate motivation is securing the 10 or 11 geographic vulnerabilities since they can’t otherwise repel an invading force. This was written about a quite a bit by geopolitical journalists and think tanks years before they invaded Ukraine, more/less predicting the scenario we seeing play out now. That’s assuming there isn’t some other escalating, flashpoint conflict over places like Kaliningrad or Transnistria. Ukraine can probably win later this year if they can repeal the Russian onslaught in late Spring and trigger a mass casualty event in Crimea by shutting off the irrigation system sluice gates in Kherson at the start of growing season (or something like that).
I stumbled across a debate video with Jesse Lee Peterson. I'm convinced Uncle Ruckus was based on him.
Agreed that Putin wants to peel off some of the old Russian Empire, but I don't see how nukes help him do that. Nuclear saber rattling, sure, but actually deploying one would be suicide. His strategy thus far has been more of a boiling frog strategy of taking small bites and hoping they're not big enough for NATO to want to risk escalation. His big mistake in Ukraine was taking a bite so big that NATO sat up and noticed. Nuking an Article V signatory would be the equivalent of trying to be the python that swallowed an entire goat at once. F-35s and B-21s would be pounding everything with a Russian flag within the hour.
He won’t flat out and nuke a NATO nation immediately, but I do think he will try to push into Poland if he secures the other non-NATO Baltic states which will then escalate into a nuke exchange. You’re right, it doesn’t help him at all. But if the Russians see not winning as an existential threat, it might not matter. And you know, shredding the START treaties yesterday wasn’t a great sign. People are pretending that Russia is on the ropes in Ukraine, but the entire war has barely begun. They’re training over 500,000 troops for a massive invasion in May.
But haven't they been on the ropes this whole time? They're getting fucking humiliated out there; the only thing they've got going for them is that they keep sending more and more "soldiers " to the grinder. They were supposed to take Kyiv/ Kiev in three days. What kind of outcome do you think they'll have with half a million poorly trained inmates/ drunks/ barely legal young men/ indigenous Russians? If all the aid to Ukraine stops, then yeah, they could succeed. But so far NOTHING has looked good for the Russians. Personally, I want to see Russia eat shit in front of the whole world, and have my whole life.
If history is any indicator, they usually win their wars by overwhelming their enemy with mass numbers. Most of their wars have also started out like this one.
We can't do the same old calculation on a new equation. The world of today is not the world of before. How many able bodied Russians fled the country, or maimed themselves to avoid conscription at the start of all this? How many Russians actually buy the official story and will "do it for the Rodina"? Putin's only hope was blitzkrieg, and that failed. His best troops, dead. His best equipment, confiscated by Ukraine farmers.
There's also the fact that the bodies the old strategy relied on historically tended to be... Ukrainian.
From a practical standpoint, I agree. From the Russian standpoint, that’s how they win wars. So it’s going to be a massive amount of Russian cannon fodder that hopes to overrun better equipped and better trained Ukrainian forces, who will have much smaller numbers. Unless Putin dies or is incapacitated from whatever he’s taking steroids for, then it’s all moot.
Can we change this thread's title to "Oh fuck, what now?" Ok. I'll play: Why would Israel bomb Iran soon?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-at...-has-enriched-uranium-close-to-weapons-grade/ Looks like time is running short to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.