War in Ukraine

Are you new here?

 

Again, not sure what comment you are referring to, but the two categories are not mutually exclusive in my experience.

 

I was exaggerating a little, certainly. France's military is not in much better shape than any of the other militaries in Europe, and almost certainly in no position to kick Russia out of Ukraine by itself. So, to a certain extent, Macron is posturing. Could France's military make enough of a difference to defeat Russia in Ukraine? Possibly, if Ukraine is well supplied, since Ukraine has been fighting Russia to a draw until they ran low on ammunition. But Ukraine would be the greater contributor to the victory, IMO.

 

I was responding to vegasfox's claims. You must have him blocked.

 

Your wild guess is wrong. You can figure out how seriously the Russians take proposed weapons donations to Ukraine by whether or not Medvedev threatens the West with nuclear retaliation. I believe that the early mentions of F-16's going to Ukraine got Medvedev worked up enough to threaten the U.S. with nuclear retaliation. I'm guessing that he's bluffing, like all of the other times he threatened the U.S. with nuclear attack.

The F-16's probably will do well against Russian aircraft, but may struggle against SAM systems. Fortunately, Ukraine has been working hard to identify and destroy Russian SAM systems in the last two years. I don't expect a 76-1 kill ratio for Ukraine, but a 4-1 or 5-1 kill ratio would not surprise me.

 

If France enters the fighting to any degree, the military effect would not nearly be as important as the political effect. Other countries, such as Poland, would follow France immediately. They are just looking for a leader. I would not give the UK or Germany long after that to be shamed into action as well. Once the U.S. has lost grasp on its leash of hounds, you had better believe we will need to enter the fray just to control them to some extent and save what’s left of our face. This was a potential that I pointed out from the beginning: allies can pull you into war as surely as you can pull them. We should have been leading the alliance from the start instead of being led by them. We also should have been deterring Russia instead of being deterred by them. We can reverse this trend, today, and stay short of general war, by implementing some of the escalatory measures I mentioned almost two years ago.

 

Well, yeah. As promised. He had nothing to add to this discussion except naked Kremlin propaganda with suspect spelling, grammar, and punctuation suggesting a non-native speaker of American English.

Which begs the question: Why haven’t you blocked him? If fewer people respond to his BS, then he will have to focus on the other sites assigned to him to troll.

 

You need to appreciate that Medvedev is a master troll. But the fact that we continue to escalate gives lie to the notion that Putin is an unhinged madman. We, in fact, are mad for ignoring the warnings of a man who presides over the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. I believe it was Condaleeza Rice who once intoned (don’t remember the context, but relevant nonetheless) “Do we really want our first warning to be a mushroom cloud ?”

 

Medvedev is not a master at anything. Putin tells him to make threats to the West that Putin is unwilling to, hoping that someone might be intimidated into doing what Putin wants. So far, only the Germans have been (slightly) intimidated. Putin is a very hinged madman. He is not insane, though. He just assumes that he is much smarter than the rest of the world's leaders, and he can make them do what he wants through hints and threats. And what most people believe he wants is a return of the Russian Empire, something that is unacceptable to Europe, the U.S., and most of Russia's neighbors.

 

The other benefit that Ukraine will get is that the U.S. missiles that we've been giving Ukraine will suddenly be a lot more accurate with a U.S. plane firing them compared to an old Russian plane.

 

Sometimes context is important. We've played this game before with Russia. If we played by Russia's rules, we would slap a Ukrainian flag on our F-35's, put our pilots in the planes and attack Russian military assets. That's exactly what Russia did in the Korean War. We went through the entire 1980's supplying Afghanistan in their fight against Russia, and Russia never nuked anyone, even when their economy collapsed.

Russia has a lot of nukes, but no one knows how many of them still work (assuming they were functional at one time), because they were neglected for a number of years. And they know that any hopes of not only an empire, but any functioning country in western Russia would be completely obliterated if they use their nukes. They also know that we will probably help them rebuild their shattered economy if they lose. We helped them in the 1990's.

 

Nope, just an incurable optimist!

 

Poor chemgstor said:
Hilarious. France has a military industrial complex? The French make perfume and purses, not weapons of war. They are another country that struggled to spend 2% of their GDP on their own defense. The closest that France has come to having a military industrial complex was when the war broke out,...

vegasfox: France is the #2 arms exporter in the world and spends a lot for its own defense. I've been soposting here for less than 2 months and you've debunked not 1 fact I've posted.. Your France posts are just another in a long list of L's for you.. You''ll never beat me on a single post. No one has ever beat me on Twitter (X) and I've been there 13 years.

How is it possible that you posted here for 2 years without knowing that Ukraine had been in a civil war since 2014? How did you not know Ukraine had been firing artillery at civilians in the Donbas since 2014? How could you think the sanctions on Russia worked? You've been wrong about virtually everything. You don't have the capacity to understand your own limitations. Keep it coming though, I love a good punching bag.

 

He has company.

 

Luxury goods are the biggest part of France's economy. The wealthiest person in France (who is the wealthiest in the world, I believe) is a luxury goods dealer, not an arms dealer. I never said that France did not sell weapons. In fact, I mentioned that France was selling tank optics to Russia early on in the war. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension.

Your thinking is as shoddy as your spelling. For a propaganda peddler, your arrogance almost exceeds your ignorance. I've beaten you on virtually every single post that I've directed towards you. You just aren't smart enough to realize it. You don't need to tell us about your love life. We're disgusted enough by what we already know about you.

 

Russia starts their next conscription drive on Monday, and it's not an April Fool's joke, apparently. Moscow promises that the conscripts will not fight in Ukraine (that's the actual joke). Tens of thousands of people are expected to be driven like cattle into digging trenches, running in place, putting bandaids on bullet wounds, and other fun activities. The new age limit is now 30, not 27. Seems that Vlad has been running out of people to fight his war and needs to expand his search. Obviously a clear indication that Russia is winning the war, and Putin wants as many Russians as possible to experience the feeling of being a winner . . .

Russia to call up tens of thousands more soldiers

 

War a real threat and Europe not ready, warns Poland's PM - BBC News

It’s only taken two years for European leaders to openly admit what has been obvious since February 2022.

 

Zelenskiy says without US aid, Ukraine forces will have to retreat — Reuters

Ukraine's Zelenskiy sacks office staff, names ambassador to Moldova — Reuters

We call it “the beginning of the end.” Wheels are coming off. Might get ugly fast. Surprised Biden is waiting this long to force Z to the table with what’s at stake. Too busy with campaigning and Stephen Colbert? Poor management. It’s beyond damage control time.

You can see in that second article, Z thinks it’s time to go after Russian infrastructure. Great plan as you’re admitting to your enemy that you will soon have to retreat. What a disaster.

My prediction is Russia takes Odesa, maybe Kharkiv and Biden will own the blame for letting the war go on too long. Even if your position is Mike Johnson is a prick, the right thing to do is force Z to the table now while Ukraine still holds Odesa, Kherson and Kharkiv. Because GOP are not caving. Everyone in Washington understands this.

 

As I said day 1, the longer the war goes on the smaller Ukraine will be when the fighting stops. As others said, the US will fight to the last Ukrainian. And as one strategic analyst and I said on twitter, Zelensky will fight to the last US dollar. How many billions has Z and his generals stolen?

Ukraine never had a chance to defeat Russia as I said before the war started. Russia had the mampower, the energy, the food, the better trained military, better weapons, better thinkers. They simply ground down the Ulrainians as all the smart people predicted.
There was never any "stalemate," as so many thought. Russia was always dominating.

Zelensky and Putin were ready to sign a ceasefire agreement in March 2022 but Biden and his puppet Boris Johnson said no. Democrats thought a war would help them in the midterms. As some of us predicted in October 2021, the Biden administration would try to instigate a war in Ukraine to distract from the disastrous Afghanistan exit. It was a surprise that Putin took the bait until we found out Ukraine was going to invade the Donbas and kill thousands of Russian-speakers..

 

you think you won. Your p

You've lost every exchange between us. I can provide dozens of examples. You can't provide 1 example where you've prevailed. Your massive ignorance has been exposed.