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And the Russian Orthodox Church ascribed to by 1/4 of the population of Ukraine.
AmericanKulak says
And the Russian Orthodox Church ascribed to by 1/4 of the population of Ukraine.
Good riddance
They are controlled from Moskau
AmericanKulak says
And the Russian Orthodox Church ascribed to by 1/4 of the population of Ukraine.
Good riddance
They are controlled from Moskau
And Catholic clergy are controlled from Rome. Should we ban them?
Patrick says
And Catholic clergy are controlled from Rome. Should we ban them?
Is Rome bombing USA?
If yes, I'd say lets ban.
It's time to come to the table and push a diplomatic solution or cut off this corrupt stooge
mell says
It's time to come to the table and push a diplomatic solution or cut off this corrupt stooge
Zelensky is not the problem.
Our congress, and intelligence agencies are the problem. Without their direct support, Zelensky would have LONG ago taken a diplomatic solution. We don't have foreign problems, we have domestic ones.
If there was not war between Russia and Ukraine, do you think our government as it currently is would be spending money on border security instead? They won't even clean up Flint Michigan.
Once you create a stooge they often come back and haunt you. How often did the US install someone who then eventually went autonomous on them. It's time to cut him off, the US may not do it, maybe Europeans will rise up and demand diplomacy. This has gone on unchecked for too long
mell says
Once you create a stooge they often come back and haunt you. How often did the US install someone who then eventually went autonomous on them. It's time to cut him off, the US may not do it, maybe Europeans will rise up and demand diplomacy. This has gone on unchecked for too long
Zelenskyy is doing precisely what he's being told to do. He's not "rogue".
He's got not real support in Ukraine. The MOMENT he goes "rogue", he'll be assassinated and replaced with another puppet. The United States wants war with Russia and has been pushing for it for 20 years.
You don't know that. You're just speculating. It looks like so far they are in line, but ultimately we don't know. Sure the US has means to deal with it, but it's important to realize that he is part of the problem as well. The US is less potent than it once was, the lesser it meddles and instead builds itself back up the better.
Never underestimate the hubris and miscalculations of the administration
The clergy and their followers have zero to do with it.
How many Americans are going to die because the money the US could have spent on border security and the fentanyl crisis instead went to this corrupt muppet.
mell says
How many Americans are going to die because the money the US could have spent on border security and the fentanyl crisis instead went to this corrupt muppet.
Are you so naive to think that after war in Ukraine stops our illustrious political class will spend money wasted in Ukraine on border and fentanyl prevention? Or they will start another war, bail out banksters for the n-th time wit 10x more money they spend on Ukraine, or something similar?
Diplomacy now is the way to go and has been for a while
Off topic, but notice how fast Croatia got NATO and EU membership
In 2011, relations between the US and Russia soured when President Putin accused the US of fomenting protests in Russia over its parliamentary elections. And from there, our State Department decided that Russia and the USA could not even pretend to be friendly.
Jump ahead to 2014: Neocons in the Obama administration figured it was time to cut Russia back down to size. That effort crystalized around the former Soviet province, Ukraine, and blossomed into the US-sponsored-and-organized Maidan Revolution, utilizing Ukraine’s sizeable Stepan Bandara legacy Nazi forces in the vanguard, to foment violence in Kiev’s main city square. The US shoved out elected Ukraine President Yanukovych — who angered America by pledging to join Russia’s Custom’s Union instead of the EU — and installed its own puppet Yatsenyuk, who was ultimately replaced by the candy tycoon, Poroshenko, replaced by the Ukrainian TV star, comedian Volodymyr Zelensky. Ha Ha. Who’s laughing now? (Nobody.)
From 2014-on, Ukraine, with America’s backing, did everything possible to antagonize Russia, especially showering the eastern provinces of Ukraine, called the Donbas, with artillery, rockets, and bombs to harass the Russia-leaning population there. After eight years of that, and continued American insults (the Steele Dossier, 2016 election interference), and renewed threats to drag Ukraine into NATO, Mr. Putin had enough and launched his “Special Military Operation” to discipline Ukraine. Once that started, American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated explicitly to the world that America’s general policy now was to “weaken Russia.”
That was accompanied by America’s policy to isolate Russia economically with ever more sanctions. Didn’t work. Russia just turned eastward to the enormous Asian market for its oil and gas and utilized an alternate electronic trade-clearance system to replace America’s SWIFT system. Sanctions also gave Russia a reason to aggressively pursue an import-replacement economic strategy — manufacturing stuff that they had been buying from the West, for instance, German machine tools critical for industry.
Russia did sacrifice more than $50-billion in financial assets stranded in the US banking system — we just confiscated it — but, ultimately, that only harmed the US banking system’s reputation as a safe place to park money, and made foreign investors much more wary of stashing capital in American banks. Net effect: the value of the ruble increased and stabilized and Russia found new ways to neutralize American economic bullying.
Europe was the big loser in all that. For a while, Europe could pretend to go along with the US / NATO project, pouring arms and money into Ukraine, and at the same time depend on Russian oil and gas imports. Eight months into the conflict, the US blew up the Nord Stream One and Two pipelines, and that was the end of Europe’s supply of affordable natgas, to heat homes and power industry. In a sane world, that would have been considered an act of war against Germany by the USA. But it only revealed the secret, humiliating state of vassalage that Europe was in. Europe had already made itself ridiculous buying into the hysteria over climate change and attempting to tailor its energy use to so-called “renewables” in history’s biggest virtue-signaling exercise. Germany, the engine of the EU’s economy, made one dumb mistake after another. It invested heavily in wind and solar installations, which fell so short of adequacy they were a joke, and it closed down its nuke-powered electric generation plants so as to appear ecologically correct.
So now, Germany, and many other EU member states, teeter on the edge of leaving Modernity behind. They managed to scramble and fill their gas reserves sufficiently this fall to perhaps squeak through winter without freezing to death, but not without a lot of sacrifice, chopping down Europe’s forests, and wearing their coats indoors. Now, only a few days into Winter, it remains to be seen how that will work out. We’ll know more in March of the new year. France had been the exception in Europe, due to its large fleet of atomic energy plants. But many of them have now aged-out, some shut down altogether, and “green” politics stood in the way of replacing them, so France, too, will find itself increasingly subject to affordable energy shortages. ...
The USA poured over $100-billion into Ukraine in arms, goods, and cash in 2022. That largesse will not continue as America sinks into its Second Great Depression. In any case, much of that schwag was fobbed off with. The arms are spent, the launchers destroyed. A lot of weapons were trafficked around to other countries and non-state actors. Russia is going to prevail in Ukraine. The news emanating from American media about Ukraine’s military triumphs was all propaganda. There was hardly ever any real doubt that Russia dominated the war zone strategically and tactically. Even its withdrawals from one city or another were tactically intelligent and worthwhile, sparing Russian lives. The Special Military Operation wasn’t a cakewalk because Russia wanted to avoid killing civilians and refrain from destroying infrastructure that would leave Ukraine a gutted, failed state. Over time, the USA proved itself to be negotiation-unworthy, and Ukraine’s president Zelensky refused to entertain rational terms for settling the crisis. So, now the gloves are off in Ukraine. As of December 29, Russia shut off the lights in Kiev and Lvov.
The open questions: how much punishment does Ukraine seek to suffer before it capitulates? Will Zelensky survive? (Even if he runs off to Miami, he may not survive.) What exactly will be left of Ukraine? In 2023 Russia will decide the disposition of things on-the-ground. Failed states make terrible neighbors. One would imagine that Russia’s main goal is to set up a rump Ukraine that can function, but cease to be an annoying pawn of its antagonists. Ukraine will no longer enjoy access to the Black Sea; it will be landlocked. The best case would be for Ukraine to revert to the agricultural backwater it was for centuries before the mighty disruptions of the modern era. Perhaps Russia will take it over altogether and govern it as it had ever since the 1700s — except for Ukraine’s brief interlude post-USSR as one of the world’s most corrupt and mal-administered sovereign states.
Bottom line: Ukraine is and always was within Russia’s sphere-of-influence, and will remain so. The USA has no business there and it will be best for all concerned when we bug out. Let’s hope that happens without America triggering a nuclear World War Three. (Yeah, “hope” is not a plan. Try prayer, then.) Mr. Putin’s challenge going into 2023 is to conclude the Ukraine hostilities without humiliating the USA to the degree that we do something really stupid.
Mr. Putin’s challenge going into 2023 is to conclude the Ukraine hostilities without humiliating the USA to the degree that we do something really stupid.
Russian Center of Gravity since around 900AD Lake Ladoga towns -> Kiev/Konugard -> Vladimir -> Moscow
Ukraine hasn't been a functional country in 800 years. It was crushed by the Golden Horde and ruled direct, unlike forested Northern Russia which was tribuatory.
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