NFR Ukraine...Little Did I Know

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longputt said:
An academician I've worked with in the Ukraine pointed out: "there is an archeological dig in a bluff on the Dnieper River in Kiev that dates back to 500BC....this means Ukraine has had people in organized dwellings for at least 2500 years, in those 2500 years it has been the Ukraine only 500!"

Everyone has taken a shot at Ukraine...I was told Odessa is the most occupied city in history...being on the path between the Middle East, Asia and Europe is tough.
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i started listening my way through this a few days ago. pretty fascinating stuff. lots of folks from north and south have passed through the area, and some have stayed before either moving on or getting pushed out. i've got a long ways to go in the read but i'm finding it really compelling material.

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fkajwg said:
I experience that feeling a lot at work.
J
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It may be why, when in my late teens and soon heading off to the Marine Corps, I asked my very old but still highly active grandfather (we were both on his roof shoveling off heavy snow), if he was fearful of death, and he just looked at me and laughed.
 
I was in Russia during a little window in time when it first opened up post 1918. In 1991, we were welcomed the people i met were wonderful but were still somewhat paranoid about the KGB… I still have a fondness for the culture I remember. The use of fear in the Putin emperor for life period is pervasive. There are plenty that wish him gone not too different than a good portion of the populace here and his mango headed admirer
 
jaredoconnor said:
This is what concerns me now. If he is humiliated and feels like he has nothing to lose, he might do something really crazy.
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This has occurred to me also as well as praying that Eugene Burdick does not prove to be prescient. Scary times once again.
 
Dustin Chromers said:
Wow, this guy is a special brand of asshole. His little incursion is getting tough now he's playing the crazy nuke card and calling it defensive. What a fucking clown. At least the calm facade is starting to crumble. I always took him at cold and calculated. He's beginning to resemble a cornered animal. While I like the idea of that a cornered animal is capable of all kinds of irrational stuff.
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you forgot "rabid"
 
Rob Allen said:
It's funny you don't hear from the more "sky is falling" type experts until the sky has actually falling. We always want to think bad things can't or won't happen. In this case we all pretty much figured Putin was bluffing or posturing.
But only now we hear from experts saying things like " Yeah we knew at Christmas that Putin was for sure going to invade"

To your comments about spectator sports. You're absolutely right and to some extent it certainly shows some not so nice things about us. Their suffering is our great entertainment?
Our living room sofas or computer desks the new coliseum? Don't want to take this too far but a little introspection of this? Yeah maybe so.

Very suprised... I expected a modern professional military. Either they sent in the B team or the Russian army is in really bad shape. Maybe all that money is in Putin's pockets instead?
Makes me curious about his nuclear arsenal.. how many of his missiles have fuel? How many would actually launch? How many would guide? How many would detonate? Not something I really want an answer to of course but it really brings into question their status as a superpower.
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I'm a Desert Storm vet. While we were sitting in the Nefud waiting to go , or moving further north during the attack, we could always get news reports on civillian radio. That included what was transpiring at home in the way of suppprt and protests.

Anyone else who was there remember the 1000's of prisoners who just gave up? or the hundreds of refugees who who stumbled into our lines that we gave aid and shelter to?

I told my wife Friday night, I now understand what our country felt like, and did, while we were there doing the mission. Some days its hard to tear away from the news, or not get emotional when I watch or read the news. Once you've been there, done that, its hard not to be sympathetic.
 
wanderingrichard said:
I'm a Desert Storm vet. While we were sitting in the Nefud waiting to go , or moving further north during the attack, we could always get news reports on civillian radio. That included what was transpiring at home in the way of suppprt and protests.

Anyone else who was there remember the 1000's of prisoners who just gave up? or the hundreds of refugees who who stumbled into our lines that we gave aid and shelter to?

I told my wife Friday night, I now understand what our country felt like, and did, while we were there doing the mission. Some days its hard to tear away from the news, or not get emotional when I watch or read the news. Once you've been there, done that, its hard not to be sympathetic.
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thank you for your service
 
Billy said:
Is anyone else surprised at the condition of the Russian equipment? Looks old and outdated. In my head I was expecting top of the line brand new stuff. No wonder they are having supple chain issues.

You let us believe in the Ghost of Kyiv😃😃😃
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There might be the possibility that Putin (lmao, my auto correct retyped it as Puta twice!) is using his PMC, Wagner, as the spearhead. They did that in Syria, too.
I'm basing that on the online report of a new "unit marking" seen Friday night on the turrets of the Russian T 72's and T80's they've been showing. Basically its a red circle with a strange Z inside it.
Bear in mind, the cyrillic alphabet doesn't really have a Z in it.
Last night there was a twitter vid that showed a Ukrainian going down a road and asking the Russian crews why theyd stopped. Most said they ran out of fuel.
The closed caption had the Ukrainian driver offering to give them a tow.... :) back to Moscow.
 
A good write-up from WAPO about the EU meeting which occurred on Saturday. Putin has to be feeling the heat and it is going to get worse. And this fellow Zelenskyy is really something else, a man for the moment. We should be so lucky.


After a perfunctory debate, the presidents and prime ministers quickly approved sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and some of Russia’s biggest banks. Talk of barring Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, however, stalled amid skepticism on the part of Scholz and the leaders of Austria, Italy and Cyprus.


Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dialed into the meeting via teleconference with a bracing appeal that left some of the world-weary politicians with watery eyes. In just five minutes, Zelensky — speaking from the battlefields of Kyiv — pleaded with European leaders for an honest assessment of his country’s ambition to join the EU and for genuine help in its fight with the Russian invaders. Food, ammunition, fuel, sanctions — Ukraine needed its European neighbors to step up with all of it.
War in Ukraine: Live Updates
“It was extremely, extremely emotional,” said a European official briefed on the call. “He was essentially saying: ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.”
Before disconnecting the video call, Zelensky told the gathering matter-of-factly that it might be the last time they saw him alive, according to a senior E.U. official who was present.



Just that quickly, the Ukrainian president’s personal appeal overwhelmed European leaders’ resistance to imposing measures that could drive the Russian economy into a state of near collapse. The result has been a rapid-fire series of developments boosting Ukraine’s long shot fight to hold off the Russian military and shattering long standing limits on European assertiveness in national security affairs.
The actions culminated on Saturday, when the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced they would bar several major Russian banks from SWIFT, crack down on Russian oligarchs, and prevent the Russian central bank from bailing out the domestic economy. The actions led Russians to crowd ATMs in a desperate bid to withdraw cash and sparked a furious response from Putin, who called them “illegitimate” and ordered his nuclear forces to a higher state of alert.
The latest sanctions mean the western allies are effectively waging financial war against Russia, matching Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine with attacks on the intangible assets comprising a $1.5 trillion economy.


“We’re not going to fight with bullets. We’re going to choke them financially,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex.
 
Something I keep thinking about... There is no great firewall of Russia. The citizens do have access to non-state-run media. Despite that, their propaganda efforts seem to be successful. Imagine how much different it would be if China did something like this. 😐
 
EU went amazingly fast from "we will not consider removing Russia from SWIFT" to delivering fighter jets directly to Ukraine.

www.wsj.com

EU Member Countries in Talks to Supply Ukraine With Jet Fighters

BRUSSELS—Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has asked the European Union for jet fighters, and some EU countries plan to supply them, EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday. A person familiar with the talks later said that discussions are still continuing. The person said any plane
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com
 
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