Welcome home!

I expect Russia will hold on to much of Donetsk and Luhansk but lose parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye. That means the Ukrainians will end up holding land Putin claims is Russia

Then what? If he actually uses nukes he's done. But politically can he really cede territory he claims is part of Russia?

It feels like he's painted himself into a corner here

Edited: typos

You win some, you lose some...

Assuming that's true, that's about half a percent of the men that are eligible for the draft. Just back of the envelope assuming half of men are fighting age out of Russia's 144 million people.

whooptiedoo...
how many Ukrainian men have fled when this shit show kicked off? remember those stories?

Sure. I was just commenting on welcoming new citizenry into imperial "home" while "old" citizenry is leaving homes on the same occasion... Makes empire stronger, no doubt.

Yeah it's not good for Putin politically, it signals huge unrest. For every 1 that actually uprooted their life and left there are probably dozens more who stayed but are pretty angry about it.

But operationally it's a small number that won't stop him getting the 300k people he wants to draft.

I couldn't figure out exactly where to put this pix.

Regarding the pipeline sabotage. I have difficulty understanding the motivations of Putin and the Russian state,
IF they are responsible. The pipelines were a major economic asset of the Russian state.
On the other hand... who would actually benefit by the loss of this asset?

Russia has been playing coy with the gas pipeline. It has stopped sending gas to the EU but it has never said this is because of the war. It has blamed "technical problems".

Now it will be able to blame the war without actually claiming retaliation. Russia will say that it's too dangerous to restart the pipeline without a peace treaty

Edited: typos

I thought the Canadians were dragging their feet with a replacement or repaired turbine?

Biden and his undersecretary of state were ON CAMERA earlier this year threatening Nord stream 2. The latter undersecretary of state even specifically threatened violence to it.

The US may have just started ww3. Not sure what Russia will do.

There is no rational justification of Russia having done this to themselves. If they wanted to shut off the flow to Europe, they didn't need to destroy the infrastructure; all they had to do was stop filling the pipeline with gas. And I don't believe for one second that Russia did it to provide themselves with cover for why they can no longer supply gas to Europe. That is an extreme length to go to fabricate an excuse that they don't even need; European countries providing military aid to Ukraine is reason enough. This was sabotage against Russia, plain and simple. We can all theorize as to whodunnit, and I don't claim to know for sure any more than the next guy. But it does seem highly suspicious that, in early 2022, Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland both said on separate occasions - and in no uncertain terms - that they would shut down the pipeline by any means necessary, if Putin invaded Ukraine.

Reposting from the other thread incase any of yoos missed it....