I'd sooner shoot Zelensky than conduct a first strike against a nuclear power. From Putin's perspective, there's nothing to distinguish an attack meant to protect Ukraine from one that is the first shot of an invasion of Russia.
A nuclear strike followed by a NATO air offensive would be quite an escalation, the subject is averting it. Preferably by just saying what they're going to do, instead of current vague "most severe consequences"
It's often said that Putin didn't quite get Biden's cautious threats seriously and thought he can get away with his escalation in February, and that he wouldn't go with it if he has been told about how he would in fact face the almost 1% of NATO land forces potential that would demolish his army as it did happen.
Sort of similar of how Saddam wasn't straight up told DON'T OR WE'LL FUCK YOU UP in these very words instead of the cautious diplomatic crap in the case of Kuwait 1990. He also didn't take it seriously, because they didn't tell him in the terms he would understand. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-21-mn-658-story.html)
thought he can get away with his escalation in February, and that he wouldn't go with it if he has been told about how he would in fact face the almost 1% of NATO land forces potential that would demolish his army as it did happen.
Were I Putin, I would go ahead of it anyway and simply nuke all of the American empire if they fired a single bullet in Russia's direction. See, saying what you will do works both ways.
Sort of similar of how Saddam wasn't straight up told DON'T OR WE'LL FUCK YOU UP in these very words instead of the cautious diplomatic crap in the case of Kuwait 1990. He also didn't take it seriously, because they didn't tell him in the terms he would understand.
Because they had no idea what they would do. It was all improvised.
And then you would die in the retaliatory barrage on your Fuhrerbunker in the Urals while still being shocked about how few of your nuclear weapons did work after decades of neglect and corruption as bad as your own, just like you now discovered how these 1.5 million winter uniforms have never even existed.
And he thinks there would be any surviving Ukrainians in the ensuing nuclear war?
No sovereign state armed with nuclear weapons will permit such an attack from another nation. The US knows this, which is why it works so hard to prevent countries that it doesn't like from becoming nuclear powers. Having nuclear weapons is a "get out of US military intervention free" card.
Nuclear winter theory (from the 1980s) probably wouldn't have happened even during the Cold War, and nowadays the nuclear arsenals are relatively small. Some talk of nuclear autumn instead. There's also an alternative nuclear summer (think Fallout).
No nuclear spring as in FarCry 5.
Anyway, in case if there's a confusion, and I think there is, it's about foiling a nuclear strike in first place, before it could take place.
Instead of (as it's being threatened now) NATO obliterating Russian forces in a massive conventional (mostly USAF) offensive as a response to a nuclear attack only after it happened.
Anyway, in case if there's a confusion, and I think there is, it's about foiling a nuclear strike in first place, before it could take place.
That's the request, and it's pure fantasy to think it would work.
Russia's nuclear arsenal, like that of the US, is designed to be survivable: missiles on road mobile launchers, missiles on trains, missiles on submarines, bombs on aircraft on alert, missiles in hardened silos.
The US undoubtedly knows where many, but not all, are at any given time. Of those it knows about, some strikes will succeed, and some will fail.
And then Russia will turn around and use all of the surviving weapons in a nuclear strike on the US and Western Europe, causing World War 3 and killing millions of people. And they would be morally justified in doing so, because it's the response to a US attack, which is a valid casus belli.
The thing about a preemptive strike on a nuclear power is that you have to destroy all of the nuclear weapons or you lose. And there is 0% chance of the US being able to destroy all of Russia's nuclear weapons before they can use them.
It's not about eliminating the entire Russian arsenal but merely foiling what people believe can be some sort of a very small Russian tactical nuclear strike (maybe even with a prior warning about the target to be nuked, like let's say an isolated strategic bridge or an air base, if the Russians want to not look the worst doing it), instead of reacting to it with a NATO air campaign in Ukraine post fact. A conventional pinpoint attack based on precise intelligence, assuming there's such.
Think about like how Israelis only demolished the Iraqi and Syrian reactors with the F-16 raids or assassinated several key Iranian scientists over the decades (one recently, with a remote controlled gun), instead of going all in and destroying everything and killing everyone related to the programs at once.
But what he does really mean is for NATO to speak to Russia in the clear terms, not still diplomatically as in before February 24 when the merely vague warnings didn't work. And there's a good chance that actual direct threats of doing what they did would have been enough for Putin to stand down and thus defused the initial crisis. The "Zapad-21 exercises" would have finally ended, Russian troops would went back to their bases as they were officially supposed to (long overdue), and that would have been all of it if they just plainly said what's in the cards and also managed to showed they're not bluffing (because they/we really weren't bluffing and were serious about it), properly talking like you should speak to an elderly former Leningrad gangster without pretending they deal with some kind of a politician.
That's like with Saddam and Kuwait in 1990. The Americans didn't comprehend how Saddam was too isolated and "too stupid" (that's a quote from the later Congress hearings) to correctly understand their diplomatically wrapped warnings, with none of his terrified underlings daring to tell him. Putin's similarly both isolated and stupid, even if he doesn't have people from his meetings hauled out and shot outside right away like Saddam did.
Yeah, Russia is not Iraq or Syria. It's a nuclear power. It's just not within the realm of possibility that Russia would "back down" if the US or Western European power were to launch a military strike against it. That's simply not how great powers ever have or ever will work. It would demand retaliation. An attack on a nation's nuclear deterrent would almost certainly prompt a nuclear strike in response.
America (under Trump, who also wasn't a pussy like Obama in that he started slowly arming Ukraine) already smashed Russian military forces (back then still pretending to be a "private military company" but they stopped pretending since, they're the GRU component answerable almost directly to Putin through only his fellow "former" gangster Prigozhin while bypassing the Stavka) in the very same Syria and there was no nuclear response (nor any other). Because they respect strength and fear the strong (to quote Putin's famous saying, "the weak get beaten", he thought Biden would be weak like Obama).
Ukraine is "invading the Russian soil" (post-annexation) and still there's no nuclear response (and probably won't be, people have feared it since the beginning, but making totally clear we're going to let it happen will ensure it in fact won't happen).
Will this asshole just put a dress shirt on once? Every time I see him anywhere he's dressed like some millionaire who doesn't have to give a shit about appearing professional. For a guy in charge of millions of people, constantly asking for money, this is like being asked to go to war for a smug beggar.
No no, see, he doesn't wear suits and shirts, because he's a man of the people, he's just like the average Ukrainian he's sending to his death! He'd lead the charge himself but he has more important things to do. (Just ignore the at least billion dollars he has stashed)
Intercepting a Russian nuclear bomber would be "crazy", but not Russia sending the bomber and then America bombing the shit out of Russian forces in Ukraine as the punishment?
Not "now", but to thwart the (potential, hypothetical) nuclear attack.
It can be a bomber, using an air-launched cruise missile fired from Russian territory rather than a bomb (presumably, assuming they're not totally insane, a very low yield warhead on some sort of isolated military target, or just Zmiinyi Island for that matter, unless Putin's all "fuck the optics I'm going in" and does a straight up terror attack), or it can be something else (you can even use an artillery gun to conduct a nuclear strike, even with a suitably low yield - unless, again, they're totally crazy and want to go big).
But the Americans have all sorts of intelligence tracking the Russian nuclear weapons (and everything else but these are high priority), and that's apparently including some kind of a mole on the very top of Russian leadership (people like to half joke about the comically nervous SVR chief Naryshkin, or General Shoigu whom the Russians love to scapegoat in public because they can't criticize the Supreme Leader).
Of course NATO (and friends, from Australia to Japan) can punish Russia. We even do it right now if you really somehow failed to notice.
I'd sooner shoot Zelensky than conduct a first strike against a nuclear power. From Putin's perspective, there's nothing to distinguish an attack meant to protect Ukraine from one that is the first shot of an invasion of Russia.
If it's an attack to foil the nuclear strike that he's just ordered, I don't know where his confusion could go from.
Regardless it’s an act of war by nato, this will lead to the decimation of Eastern Europe with nukes.
A conventional attack on Russian military is in the cards anyway but as a punitive response.
Which is completely stupid, this is only going to escalate and lead to China grabbing as much land as possible while we deal with Russia
A nuclear strike followed by a NATO air offensive would be quite an escalation, the subject is averting it. Preferably by just saying what they're going to do, instead of current vague "most severe consequences"
It's often said that Putin didn't quite get Biden's cautious threats seriously and thought he can get away with his escalation in February, and that he wouldn't go with it if he has been told about how he would in fact face the almost 1% of NATO land forces potential that would demolish his army as it did happen.
Sort of similar of how Saddam wasn't straight up told DON'T OR WE'LL FUCK YOU UP in these very words instead of the cautious diplomatic crap in the case of Kuwait 1990. He also didn't take it seriously, because they didn't tell him in the terms he would understand. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-21-mn-658-story.html)
Were I Putin, I would go ahead of it anyway and simply nuke all of the American empire if they fired a single bullet in Russia's direction. See, saying what you will do works both ways.
Because they had no idea what they would do. It was all improvised.
And then you would die in the retaliatory barrage on your Fuhrerbunker in the Urals while still being shocked about how few of your nuclear weapons did work after decades of neglect and corruption as bad as your own, just like you now discovered how these 1.5 million winter uniforms have never even existed.
And he thinks there would be any surviving Ukrainians in the ensuing nuclear war?
No sovereign state armed with nuclear weapons will permit such an attack from another nation. The US knows this, which is why it works so hard to prevent countries that it doesn't like from becoming nuclear powers. Having nuclear weapons is a "get out of US military intervention free" card.
He's a paid actor. He doesn't give a damn about the Ukrainian people.
Nuclear winter theory (from the 1980s) probably wouldn't have happened even during the Cold War, and nowadays the nuclear arsenals are relatively small. Some talk of nuclear autumn instead. There's also an alternative nuclear summer (think Fallout).
No nuclear spring as in FarCry 5.
Anyway, in case if there's a confusion, and I think there is, it's about foiling a nuclear strike in first place, before it could take place.
Instead of (as it's being threatened now) NATO obliterating Russian forces in a massive conventional (mostly USAF) offensive as a response to a nuclear attack only after it happened.
That's the request, and it's pure fantasy to think it would work.
Russia's nuclear arsenal, like that of the US, is designed to be survivable: missiles on road mobile launchers, missiles on trains, missiles on submarines, bombs on aircraft on alert, missiles in hardened silos.
The US undoubtedly knows where many, but not all, are at any given time. Of those it knows about, some strikes will succeed, and some will fail.
And then Russia will turn around and use all of the surviving weapons in a nuclear strike on the US and Western Europe, causing World War 3 and killing millions of people. And they would be morally justified in doing so, because it's the response to a US attack, which is a valid casus belli.
The thing about a preemptive strike on a nuclear power is that you have to destroy all of the nuclear weapons or you lose. And there is 0% chance of the US being able to destroy all of Russia's nuclear weapons before they can use them.
It's not about eliminating the entire Russian arsenal but merely foiling what people believe can be some sort of a very small Russian tactical nuclear strike (maybe even with a prior warning about the target to be nuked, like let's say an isolated strategic bridge or an air base, if the Russians want to not look the worst doing it), instead of reacting to it with a NATO air campaign in Ukraine post fact. A conventional pinpoint attack based on precise intelligence, assuming there's such.
Think about like how Israelis only demolished the Iraqi and Syrian reactors with the F-16 raids or assassinated several key Iranian scientists over the decades (one recently, with a remote controlled gun), instead of going all in and destroying everything and killing everyone related to the programs at once.
But what he does really mean is for NATO to speak to Russia in the clear terms, not still diplomatically as in before February 24 when the merely vague warnings didn't work. And there's a good chance that actual direct threats of doing what they did would have been enough for Putin to stand down and thus defused the initial crisis. The "Zapad-21 exercises" would have finally ended, Russian troops would went back to their bases as they were officially supposed to (long overdue), and that would have been all of it if they just plainly said what's in the cards and also managed to showed they're not bluffing (because they/we really weren't bluffing and were serious about it), properly talking like you should speak to an elderly former Leningrad gangster without pretending they deal with some kind of a politician.
That's like with Saddam and Kuwait in 1990. The Americans didn't comprehend how Saddam was too isolated and "too stupid" (that's a quote from the later Congress hearings) to correctly understand their diplomatically wrapped warnings, with none of his terrified underlings daring to tell him. Putin's similarly both isolated and stupid, even if he doesn't have people from his meetings hauled out and shot outside right away like Saddam did.
Yeah, Russia is not Iraq or Syria. It's a nuclear power. It's just not within the realm of possibility that Russia would "back down" if the US or Western European power were to launch a military strike against it. That's simply not how great powers ever have or ever will work. It would demand retaliation. An attack on a nation's nuclear deterrent would almost certainly prompt a nuclear strike in response.
America (under Trump, who also wasn't a pussy like Obama in that he started slowly arming Ukraine) already smashed Russian military forces (back then still pretending to be a "private military company" but they stopped pretending since, they're the GRU component answerable almost directly to Putin through only his fellow "former" gangster Prigozhin while bypassing the Stavka) in the very same Syria and there was no nuclear response (nor any other). Because they respect strength and fear the strong (to quote Putin's famous saying, "the weak get beaten", he thought Biden would be weak like Obama).
Ukraine is "invading the Russian soil" (post-annexation) and still there's no nuclear response (and probably won't be, people have feared it since the beginning, but making totally clear we're going to let it happen will ensure it in fact won't happen).
Go fuck yourself zelensky
Will this asshole just put a dress shirt on once? Every time I see him anywhere he's dressed like some millionaire who doesn't have to give a shit about appearing professional. For a guy in charge of millions of people, constantly asking for money, this is like being asked to go to war for a smug beggar.
No no, see, he doesn't wear suits and shirts, because he's a man of the people, he's just like the average Ukrainian he's sending to his death! He'd lead the charge himself but he has more important things to do. (Just ignore the at least billion dollars he has stashed)
Unlike Putin, who never did, Zelensky regularly visits the war zone. Which makes the Russian state TV mad about how they failed to get him again.
Also unlike Putin, Zelensky doesn't try to play a military commander. Which is why he's winning.
This is so crazy that I'd say it's more likely this is some sort of mistranslation.
Dunno, sounds pretty in character for the Ukrainian government.
If they are, then it's part of Ukraine's strategy of making outrageous demands to make it appear that Western countries are following a 'middle path'.
No it’s zelenksy doing what a good puppet does, whatever his globohomo handlers want, and the globohomo wants ww3
WW3 would result in a loss of their power, so I don't think they want that.
Would it though? They certainly seem to be trying to cause it.
Intercepting a Russian nuclear bomber would be "crazy", but not Russia sending the bomber and then America bombing the shit out of Russian forces in Ukraine as the punishment?
It was not at all clear that it was talk of intercepting a bomber. But rather attacking now, because ????
The US has no right to 'punish' Russia, or anyone.
Not "now", but to thwart the (potential, hypothetical) nuclear attack.
It can be a bomber, using an air-launched cruise missile fired from Russian territory rather than a bomb (presumably, assuming they're not totally insane, a very low yield warhead on some sort of isolated military target, or just Zmiinyi Island for that matter, unless Putin's all "fuck the optics I'm going in" and does a straight up terror attack), or it can be something else (you can even use an artillery gun to conduct a nuclear strike, even with a suitably low yield - unless, again, they're totally crazy and want to go big).
But the Americans have all sorts of intelligence tracking the Russian nuclear weapons (and everything else but these are high priority), and that's apparently including some kind of a mole on the very top of Russian leadership (people like to half joke about the comically nervous SVR chief Naryshkin, or General Shoigu whom the Russians love to scapegoat in public because they can't criticize the Supreme Leader).
Of course NATO (and friends, from Australia to Japan) can punish Russia. We even do it right now if you really somehow failed to notice.
Also https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/15JnU9dOZ6/x/c/4Oeyr0j0m1f
He's not "calling for a nuclear strike" at all.
So guaranteed nuclear death for billions of people over your country getting nuked because you didn't know when to wind it in.
I think of myself as a bit of a Machiavellian so this is an easy solution....
Can Von Der Leyen come get her rabid dog please...