Putin Invades the Ukraine

[Pio1980]

A palace rebellion could end this instantly, kill the tiger or ride it untill it kills you.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Pio1980

A palace rebellion could end this instantly, kill the tiger or ride it untill it kills you.

Probably the best hope of a brinksmanship strategy is not to get Putin to back down, but to give a sharp push to that palace rebellion.

[nailer]

There is no palace to stage a coup.

Even if there is, US backed regime changes rarely, if ever, work out as intended.

[Oerets]

What fools soon NATO and the world will be shown to be. For once Putin pulls off this and learns the Nuke threat works so well and sanctions don't last once they become painful to the countries needing his resources. Will use the prepared to use the Nuke card when invading a NATO country.

Convinced are we that he will never do the unthinkable. Assured by logic in thinking quite right to believe so. He is more then capable of having them launched by trickery and misinformation that the operators may well not even know it is for real, but a drill or exercise. Or even posed as a counter attack lie!

He is ruthless, pure evil and showing just how little he cares for human life. Pay attention he is not shy in the telling....

[BigElCat]

NATO won't declare a 'no fly zone', but they could at least fly sorties into Ukrainian air space.

Probe Russia's air defense. Hit the SAM launcher with a Turkish drone.

Tit for Tat. Just a little bit everyday. Russian planes violate Swedish air space, shoot them.

[Chicks]

Putin wants ‘normalization’ of global relations, saying there is ‘no need’ for sanctions on Russia

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ion-sanctions/

Right, Vlad. Sure. And Donny was the best ever president*.

[donquixote99]

Analysis in Haaretz seems spot on to me. Excepts from the last paragraphs:

The endgame is the elusive concept everyone in the West is trying to decipher. In this case, Putin’s actions are dictated by narrowed options and rolling events rather than a coherent, phased grand plan. His grand motivation, however, is something different and should be studied seriously.
...
He’s thus motivated by a deep sense of history and his place in it. That’s why calling him “irrational” is a mistake of judging him by the wrong set of values and wrongly assuming he operated according to “Western” considerations of cost effectiveness.
...
Putin is intent on taking all of Ukraine, “denazifying” and “demilitarizing” it
...
With the heavy sanctions expected to have substantial impact on Russia’s economy in the coming days, along with Putin’s intransigence and increasingly brutal modus operandi, it seems the only viable option to end the war and avert disaster is a coup in Moscow.

In other words, Linsday Graham is sort of right, though probably without benefit of any deep thought, and as a leading US Senator, he is only messing stuff up by saying so out loud in order to posture as a tough guy.

[finnbow]

[Chicks]

The Russian Elite Can’t Stand the Sanctions
The latest measures are far more effective than Western powers’ past efforts to target Russia’s elite.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...wealth/623886/

[Pio1980]

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/ncna1290442