"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (5 Viewers)

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There were also significant national Austrian politicians pushing for union with Germany, unlike Czechoslovakia, where union with Germany was an issue for regional politicians. Politics in a lot of Central Europe was, at best, messy Before WWII. During the war, every occupied country* had parts of its population collaborating to some extent (I'm not counting somebody selling lunch to a German soldier as collaboration**, but turning in your neighbor for listening to the BBC up to and including cheerfully joining in implementing the Holocaust and joining SS military units do)




* Except, maybe, the Channel Islands.
** Especially if they spit in it and jack up the price
 
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Why do Russian soldiers break on the Ukranian battlefield?
The war through the eyes of Viktor Shayga, a Russian who volunteered to join the army as a contract soldier in March 2022.
 
Also interesting:

Part 1 Why do Russian soldiers fight in Ukraine?

Part 2: Why do Russian soldiers quit fighting in Ukraine and go home?
 
Agreed.

However, such military blunder is evident to anybody who is not brain dead since late march.
All the fighting since then is just face-saving (that IMHO is going from bad to worse) or a matter of not hurting Putin's feelings.

Other than that, what do they expect to get? Increasing Russian territory by 0,1%?, and that assuming that Russia doesn't go the way of the Soviet union.
 
Other than that, what do they expect to get? Increasing Russian territory by 0,1%?, and that assuming that Russia doesn't go the way of the Soviet union.
The Donbas is where Ukraine's gas and oil reserves are located. If Ukraine can retake this territory they can set up a competing pipeline service to Europe, making Russia more of an irrelevancy. That's Putin's two goals, to ensure that only Russia controls oil and especially gas from the east to Europe and to ensure that Ukraine never has the petro dollars to become a prosperous, western-like state.
 
Putin burned that card. Dont think western powers will buy any fossil fuel if there is something else on the market. And there is.
 
One of the economists buffnut453 quoted, Mr. Sonnenfeld, has said that the oil pipeline going to China would barely provide the City of Leeds' energy requirements. It's all set up to go the other way.
 
Putin burned that card. Dont think western powers will buy any fossil fuel if there is something else on the market. And there is.
Jokes aside, this war has given alternative energy initiatives a serious slap on the butt to get moving. There's no way that without this war the Germans would be rushing toward alternative energy. And we'd never see nuclear getting any deutsche leidenschaft (is that a thing?) without Putin's folly into Ukraine.


At this rate we'll see the western Europeans crack nuclear fusion energy before the end of the decade.


Perhaps a planet with fewer GHG will be Putin's legacy.
 
Russia amping up the rhetoric about US/NATO engagement in Ukraine:


I really worry about Putin feeling so backed into a corner that he elects to go (literally) nuclear. I hope he's not that stupid but, of all the world's leaders, he's the most likely to push the button simply because he doesn't care about a single other human being on the planet.
 
The Colonel called it correctly, saying "it's going to get worse" once Lend Lease is underway.

I have to say that this guy speaks a lot of home truths and I am more than a little surprised that they let him continue to speak. There was quite open criticism of the Russian Political and Military leaders, the use of contract soldiers, of the assumption that Ukraine are on the point of breaking, that India and China are unconditional allies, that the Ukraine troops could be considered unprofessional, and a whole lot more.

I hope he is careful about what he eats and drinks
 
Well...the prophecy that Serbia would go on the offensive against Kosovo a few days ago was clearly inaccurate. However, tensions are definitely rising. This article helps explain some of it but I feel there's a lot missing. Forcing ethnic Serbs to adopt Kosovo number plates on their cars seems a very poor reason for kicking off a shooting war:

 
We just don't need another INES-7: We've already had two (and both in my lifetime) already (Chernobyl: 1986 and Fukushima: 2011). Frankly, you'd think even the Russians would realize that this doesn't benefit anybody. Fallout from a nuclear reactor doesn't care about national boundaries, it just goes wherever the wind blows it, and ionizing radiation doesn't care whether you're Ukrainian or Russian (or American).
 

And the wind is generally west-to-east in that part of the world, though it does circulate NW as well.
 

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