Stupid Shit in Kyiv

[Travv]

Kyiv Ukraine—As shells have begun exploding in the heart of Kyiv, museums have rushed to protect their most prized, valuable pieces: the original artwork of once-in-a-generation talent Hunter Biden.

"The Louvre may have Van Gogh and the Mona Lisa, but here we have Coke On Coke by Hunter Biden," said museum owner Ivan Rostyslav. "I will never forget when he sold us this piece, he said to me, 'Ivan, I don't know how I got here or where my pants are but can you get me to the airport?' Ha! What an artist he is!

According to sources, most of the paintings were initially purchased for the Burisma boardroom with the tacit understanding that then-Vice President Joe Biden would look out for Ukraine. Museum owners waged huge bidding wars to acquire the pieces, knowing that beyond the remarkable art, each painting came with the assurance that the United States would have their back.

"We were lucky to get our hands on Hooked By Hookers, it's quite a popular piece," said curator Viktor Dankevych as he took the piece down for safe storage in a bomb shelter. "But more importantly, we know it means that President Biden will take care of Ukraine in our time of need. I hear the planes overhead, the air raid sirens, I do not panic. I know the United States will come to help."

At publishing time, sources say all of the Biden paintings have been sold on eBay to Taiwan. . .

[The Cane]

Let's not forget who was screaming at the top of their lungs against pulling America into yet another war (we were already involved in two others).

So, maybe Obama shouldn't have drawn a line in the sand then. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

[Fred54]

For donation I saw a lot of different stuff, even people asking to drop money on cards.

I assume there will be also some scam in these demands.

Personally I used this way.

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/nats...potrebi-armiyi

And I also keep some money to help straight my Ukrainian contacts straight if they need / ask.

I am in regular contact with 5 people, 3 have left to Europe, 2 want to stay in Ukraine with one in Kiev.

[Xpartan]

America is to blame for this shtt show. The Democrats, the party of Orgy Island and small dick syndrome. Hunter Biden etc. Rusisans are pounding (with lead) the Nazis who are rotting on the streets for dogs to feed on. XPartan and others should take their tin foils off, put a tin hat on and join up.

As Scarlet O'Hara might have said: War over, the price of pussy is going to go sky high this year.

Deep breath, comrade. Deep breath.

[Xpartan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_7tA9lesNo

I recently found this video (about 10 minutes) in which Niall Ferguson (noted author and historian) gives his assessment. He specifically points the finger at mistakes made by Obama, Trump, Biden, and Merkel. I'm sure that list could be expanded but the point is that many bear a degree of responsibility. What percentage you choose to assign to any individual politician is really a subjective decision. But it was essentially a synergy of failures and they're all accountable for not doing enough to thwart Putin.

Even so, I keep coming back to my point that Putin was never going to be deterred because this is a crusade for him. It's always been a question of when, not if. And, if you took Merkel out of the equation and inserted a hardliner, or took Trump away and inserted Clinton, we'd still be arriving at the same place. The ONLY thing that would have stopped Putin is if he'd been deposed or killed, nothing else. Unfortunately, since Russia is a nuclear power, eliminating Putin (from the outside) has never been in the cards.

He's contradicting himself all the time. First he admits that Ukraine is a special project for Putin who's trying to restore the empire. Then in the same breath, he blames Biden for lifting objections to Nord 2 as if that emboldened Russia to invade. Makes no sense. That's not an analyses, that's a collection of soundbites.

[NRandom940]

What news I watch has not had media reports saying that Ukraine is winning. I watch major news orginzations like Reuters and BBC and there is not media reports saying that Ukraine is winning. None. I do not know where others get their news. All people are saying is that Ukrainians are putting up a better fight than Russian thought they would but not under any delusion that they are are winning. The foreign fighters who go there are doing so on moral grounds and I hope they have some understanding that what they will need to do is guerrilla warfare because that is what needs to be happening right now. Ukrainians cannot hope to match the Russians on convententional terms. No one I read is saying they are winning.

I was ultralight infantry and we studied guerrilla warfare. Yes I should not be armchair quarterbacking because I am not ont he ground, but I heard that the Ukraine military called for their forces to go guerrilla warfare. I was light infantry for 6 years. We studied and practiced how to operate and move in small groups to be undetected and then link up and do larger operations. Although that depends on woods for cover too. They need to send them some on-off road scooters, or dual sport motorcycles (muffle the shit out of them) and have a guy on the back with a rocket launcher. And do fast attack and stick and run techiniques. Smaller quicker agile groups can do damage with those Javelins (shoulder operated missile) we are sending them and some RPGs. They could do link up operations where 30 or 40 of them meet up near the Russian formation on On-off road dual sport motorcycles and hit them hard and then escape cross country throught the trees. If I was 20 years younger I would conisder going there myself.

One scenario that is likely in the future, and somewhat unsettling.

Russia will destroy Ukrainian forces in population centers and it will become a guerilla war (unless Ukraine signs Russia's peace terms). This guerilla war will only be kept alive by NATO countries supplying the guerrillas with weapons. This would leave Russia with no choice but to attack a NATO country directly.

I really think Putin may be senile and completely irrational.

[Mojo Bandit]

I didn't mean to offend anyone.

As I've said before, when we came we didn't expect Putin to invade. We just assumed he was talking nonsense. Now of course that he invaded, I am the first to admit we made a terrible decision. If my reports, help others that are stuck in the country or who may have even considered coming here then at least I helped one person.

I am sure there are many people who read this thread but don't reply that had the same idea as us and may even still be in the country.

To any foreign volunteer: do not believe the Ukrainian propaganda! The military situation in Ukraine is dire, the media will have you think that Ukraine is winning. That is not the case whatsoever! Please be careful.

What news I watch has not had media reports saying that Ukraine is winning. I watch major news orginzations like Reuters and BBC and there is not media reports saying that Ukraine is winning. None. I do not know where others get their news. All people are saying is that Ukrainians are putting up a better fight than Russian thought they would but not under any delusion that they are are winning. The foreign fighters who go there are doing so on moral grounds and I hope they have some understanding that what they will need to do is guerrilla warfare because that is what needs to be happening right now. Ukrainians cannot hope to match the Russians on convententional terms. No one I read is saying they are winning.

I was ultralight infantry and we studied guerrilla warfare. Yes I should not be armchair quarterbacking because I am not ont he ground, but I heard that the Ukraine military called for their forces to go guerrilla warfare. I was light infantry for 6 years. We studied and practiced how to operate and move in small groups to be undetected and then link up and do larger operations. Although that depends on woods for cover too. They need to send them some on-off road scooters, or dual sport motorcycles (muffle the shit out of them) and have a guy on the back with a rocket launcher. And do fast attack and stick and run techiniques. Smaller quicker agile groups can do damage with those Javelins (shoulder operated missile) we are sending them and some RPGs. They could do link up operations where 30 or 40 of them meet up near the Russian formation on On-off road dual sport motorcycles and hit them hard and then escape cross country throught the trees. If I was 20 years younger I would conisder going there myself.

[PedroMorales]

America is to blame for this shtt show. The Democrats, the party of Orgy Island and small dick syndrome. Hunter Biden etc. Rusisans are pounding (with lead) the Nazis who are rotting on the streets for dogs to feed on. XPartan and others should take their tin foils off, put a tin hat on and join up.

As Scarlet O'Hara might have said: War over, the price of pussy is going to go sky high this year.

[Jmsuttr]

And Obama's inability (or lack of desire) to adequately confront him back in 2014 was a profound and costly mistake.

But Trump's incessant, baffling and, quite frankly, nauseating bootlicking has certainly emboldened him to a huge degree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_7tA9lesNo

I recently found this video (about 10 minutes) in which Niall Ferguson (noted author and historian) gives his assessment. He specifically points the finger at mistakes made by Obama, Trump, Biden, and Merkel. I'm sure that list could be expanded but the point is that many bear a degree of responsibility. What percentage you choose to assign to any individual politician is really a subjective decision. But it was essentially a synergy of failures and they're all accountable for not doing enough to thwart Putin.

Even so, I keep coming back to my point that Putin was never going to be deterred because this is a crusade for him. It's always been a question of when, not if. And, if you took Merkel out of the equation and inserted a hardliner, or took Trump away and inserted Clinton, we'd still be arriving at the same place. The ONLY thing that would have stopped Putin is if he'd been deposed or killed, nothing else. Unfortunately, since Russia is a nuclear power, eliminating Putin (from the outside) has never been in the cards.

[Crusader560]

I just saw that Bolton said. If Trump would have won his re election. He would have pulled the USA out of NATO.

And that is what Putin wanted. So, he could put the USSR back together. WOW.

Blaming Trump for the actions of Putin is like blaming Biden for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal after a 20 year occupation. Or Blaming Trump or Biden for Americas 900,000+ COVID deaths.

There's nothing one man can do, to avoid any of this stuff. American politicians only give a damn about one thing: re-election.

[Jmsuttr]

IMO, political debate absolutely serves a purpose now. Ukraine is about to be destroyed and USA is going to be severely weakened if Russia is handed over to the Chinese. We need to discuss what, if anything, went wrong in order to know what to do next.

I'm completely in agreement with John Mearsheimer (https://www.mearsheimer.com/) that Ukraine was terribly mishandled by the USA, starting in 2008 (G W Bush / Dick Cheney administration). What should have been done is declare that NATO and EU would eventually be replaced by a United States of Europe, which would never include Ukraine, and that Finland, Baltic States and Moldova would be kept demilitarized provided Russia kept Kaliningrad enclave, western Belarus and western Ukraine demilitarized. Nice clean division between west and east Europe, with a demilitarized buffer zone in between. Good fences make good neighbors.

I have no doubt the Ukrainians are brave, determined, filled with angry energy, and thus will fight like lions. Problem is, lions are stupid animals, and what is needed now is not physical courage but rstger brains and moral courage, meaning the courage to make unpopular decisions..

Was meant primarily with Ukrainians in mind. For any who are sitting in a comfortable chair, and typing on a keyboard in the warmth of a nicely heated and illuminated abode, feel free to analyze, pseudo-analyze, blame, pontificate, justify, or whatever, to your heart's content.

But such activities have little point or worth for people who are dodging bullets and bombs. For them it's about survival. And it's those unfortunates who are uppermost in my concerns.

[The Cane]

But my point is simply that Putin's mentality and ambition long preceded Trump and that, had Trump never become president, Putin's trajectory would have remained the same.

May I please borrow your crystal ball? Or, at least tell me where you got yours. So I can go and get me one too.

[The Cane]

Let's get one thing straight here after that drivel you wrote. There is zero blame on trump. Weak losers blame others for their mistakes and failures.

Talk about some drivel. And Donald Chump did plenty of just that. Blaming other people for anything and everything and not owning up to his own failings for four solid years. It got him impeached twice he was so bad. The man was the worst president in American history because he didn't respect nor live up to our democratic standards and ideals. He didn't even try to. He had nothing but admiration for strong man dictators around the world, and still does. Five year-old accountability:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYr2XteXUB8

[Rocko20]

But Trump's incessant, baffling and, quite frankly, nauseating bootlicking has certainly emboldened him to a huge degree.

Blaming Trump for the actions of Putin is like blaming Biden for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal after a 20 year occupation. Or Blaming Trump or Biden for Americas 900,000+ COVID deaths.

There's nothing one man can do, to avoid any of this stuff. American politicians only give a damn about one thing: re-election.

[Xpartan]

First of all yes, Putin is one of the last commies in power left who thinks that the demise of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. I know that the majority of the people who lived under the thumb of the Soviet Union, including the Russian people themselves, don't agree him. And yes again, Obama showed absolute weakness when his "red line" in Syria was crossed, and then he did nothing (I saw the same interview).

Three things.

1. Let's not forget who was screaming at the top of their lungs against pulling America into yet another war (we were already involved in two others).

Republicans, in particular, have turned against Syrian airstrikes. A week ago, Republicans were divided about evenly: 35% favored and 40% opposed military airstrikes in response to the governments alleged use of chemical weapons. Today, Republicans oppose airstrikes by an overwhelming 70% to 21% margin, with 51% saying they are strongly opposed.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics...strikes-surges

2. Let's also remember that President went ahead and asked the authorization from Congress.

So when the president stepped into the sunny Rose Garden that Saturday morning, he announced that he had made two decisions: first, that the U.S. should act against Syria, and second, that he would seek explicit authorization from Congress to do so. With that, the administration set out on a different campaign than the military one we had been preparing for: to convince the American people that intervening in Syria was in the countrys interest.

What transpired over the next month was one of the most controversial and revealing episodes in eight years of Obamas foreign policy. Despite the administrations strong advocacy and support from a small minority of hawkish politicians, Congress and the American people proved strongly opposed to the use of force.

3. Let's also remember that ASSAD AND THE RUSSIANS did cave in.

In the end, however, the threat of military action and a surprise offer by Russia ended up achieving something no one had imagined possible: the peaceful removal of 1,300 tons of Syrias chemical weapons (there have been reports of stray weapons and widespread use of industrial chemicals like chlorine, but no evidence of systematic deception on the part of the Syrian government).

By October 2013, without a bomb being dropped, the Bashar Assad regime had admitted having a massive chemical weapons program it had never before acknowledged, agreed to give it up and submitted to a multinational coalition that removed and destroyed the deadly trove. From my perspective at the Pentagon, this seemed like an incontrovertible, if inelegant, example of what academics call coercive diplomacy, using the threat of force to achieve an outcome military power itself could not even accomplish.

Of course, as soon as the military option was off the table, repubs immediately changed their tune, but that's what they always do. Can a leopard change its spots?

The point is that removing chemical weapons from Syria was a huge victory for the US and the world. It's amazing that so many people think of it as a defeat after everything that was acomplished.

According to U.S. estimates, at more than 1,300 metric tons spread out over as many as 45 sites in a country about twice the size of Virginia, Syrias arsenal of chemical weapons in 2013 was the worlds third-largest. It was 10 times greater than the CIAs (erroneous) 2002 estimate of Iraqs chemical weapons stash, and 50 times larger than the arsenal Libya declared it had in late 2011. Because of the size and scope of the threat, Syrias chemical weapons were the administrations top concern during the first several years of the crisis.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...isited-214059/

The same can't be said about Obama's reaction to Russia's aggression in 2014, which was muted and weak, but blaming him for Syria is not fair at all.