Senate Russia: its impact on the world, its invasion of Ukraine, and its future

This is also interesting.

List of NATO exercises

Spoiler

2020

DEFENDER-Europe 20 is a U.S.-led multinational exercise, including NATO's participation. It is the largest deployment of U.S.-based forces to Europe in more than 25 years with 20,000 soldiers deployed directly from the U.S. to Europe.

Six U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bomber aircraft from the 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, had arrived Aug. 22, 2020 at RAF Fairford, England for a long planned training mission where the aircraft conducted theater and flight training across Europe and Africa.

The strategic bomber missions “Bomber Task Force”, which have been occurring since 2018, provide opportunities for U.S. integration with NATO allies and put pressure on Russia.

On September 4, the American B-52s entered the airspace of Ukraine for the first time in history, where they made a long flight along the borders of the Crimean peninsula.

On Sep. 25, two U.S. bombers staged a mock attack run on Russia’s territory in Eastern Europe. The flight path allowed the bombers effectively to fly a circle around Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic between Poland and Lithuania. The simulated raid on the Kaliningrad region was a test case of destroying Russian air defense systems located in the region.

Altogether, in August-September 2020, American nuclear weapons carriers flew at least 18 times to Russia's northern, western and southern borders during the operation, which is an unprecedented event since the end of the Cold War.

2021
Defender-Europe 21, one of the largest U.S.-Army, NATO-led military exercises in Europe in decades, began in mid-March and will last until June. It included "nearly simultaneous operations across more than 30 training areas" in Albania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo and other countries. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, commanding general of the United States Army Europe and Africa, said that "While we are closely monitoring the COVID situation, we’ve proven we have the capability to train safely despite the pandemic." Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russia has deployed troops to its western borders for "combat training exercises" in response to NATO "military activities that threaten Russia."

CAPABLE DEPLOYER 2021 – NATO Allied Force Interoperability Exercise, which is planned and coordinated by the Multinational Logistics Center. The exercises will take place in Romania from May 2 to 23.

Wind Spring 21 – Maintain the operational capacity of planning and executing joint and multinational NATO military operations in Europe. 2- 27 May Romania

Posting this just to point out the intense militarization by the West, maybe in response, but nonetheless: not discussed enough. It's a factor that seems to be entirely missing from the debate, while it's exactly the thing that escalates a situation like this. Military buildups tend to lead to some conclusion.

I realize I'm basically Bor Mulleting you guys now, but with conventional weapons. So I'll leave it at this.

 

Watto you see why I lose my cool with these guys.

 

i guess 'these guys' is better than 'you people'

 

There was also religious bigotry, at least.

 

I had to get better internet to pull this up

Spoiler

 

There was a referendum here on the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement in 2016. It was made a political issue. I was against the referendum altogether. Not a fan.

But what I mean is: the expansion of the EU was otherwise never on any agenda. Syria was. Iraq. The economy. The environment. Expansion of the EU? Crickets. It just happened.

And it's an absolutely drastic move. The EEC consisted of the European countries that had dodged the Soviet scare, and it worked splendidly for decades. It worked so well, even the UK joined. But the EU? It hasn't really proven its worth yet. It's crisis after crisis. Most importantly, EU voters don't feel represented. Anywhere. That's why there was a Brexit in the first place.

Then to expand your region to include those former Soviet sattelite states. In a couple of years. Why? Why not first make sure your alliance is durable, like you did with the EEC?

I mean it's not nothing. This is Western Europe. They've warred for centuries. There was always some wicked warlord who wanted to unite Europe under his rule - Louix XIV, Napoleon, Hitler. And now we managed to get it together in peace. So let's just keep still for a century until we seek borderlands, alright? Or this whole experiment will explode right in our faces and we're back to square one.

So the reason I don't trust expansion of NATO and the EU is not that I don't trust the aspiring countries; I don't trust NATO or the EU. One is too trigger-happy, the other's too fragile.

 

Would having some make you feel better?

 

Man, that brings me back. To 3SA.

Because I thought: that would be cool sig - "this is Freedom Fries all over again" - and that made me think of sigs that set people off.

There was a guy - I think it was Jediflyer - who had a sig that said "USA fights for liberty and justice" or some crap of the sort, right when the US began its invasion of Iraq. And I challenged him on that, right there in the Episode 3 spoilers forum. So he PMd me and said "that's not cool, you don't discuss that there, fite me in the Senate". So I did and got kicked out.

Nearly twenty years on, I'm sort of allowed, and sigs with statements still irk me. But not as much.

 

Looks like Reddit has cracked down on r/Russia and has quarantined it. Ban probably.

Also a video floating around the internet of a son and father and their dogs being killed by Russian soldiers. Don’t watch it. And no it wasn’t accidental either. They shot at the vehicle and than dragged them out.

 

Air Raid Sirens in Kyiv

 

Actually, I don't think this is the best comparison. The girl with the sexy clothes isn't carrying a gun, and in this case, the threat is getting shot by someone else with a gun rather than rape.

A better metaphor would be the behavior of mob families, and that's pretty much how I think Putin thinks of Western democracies actually -- countries, in his view, that claim to be governed by the people but that are really controlled by rich people that are not much less corrupt or violent or aggressive than Russia is.

So, imagine a city whose territory is divided up by a few of dozen mob families. Putin's the head of one mob family on 1 side of the city, and all the mob families on the other side agree to a truce and to fight any other mob family if any of the families who reached this pact are attacked. Then, imagine more and more families joining this alliance until they are right next to the territory held by Putin's family. If you were Putin, wouldn't this cause you some level of concern?

Sure, things are more complicated. Putin's family has remained just as ruthless as it's ever been, while the families in the pact have mostly gone legit, and they've only acted in defense -- never as aggressors -- as a group. At the same time, the most powerful family in this alliance has a history of acting aggressively on its own, recently invading another territory for no justifiable reason, and even going so far as to meddle in the business of Putin's own family.

None of this leads me to believe that Putin is justified at all in invading Ukraine. Still, I can see why he interprets NATO expansion as a threat.

 

Nobody asks the question of why everyone would rather be NATO's friend than Russia's.

 

You don’t get a choice to be Russia’s friend. At least if your a country that borders Russia and don’t also border China.

 

Apparently there a crack team of SAS veterans in Ukrainian as well.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/crack-team-sas-veterans-joining-26350789

 

This isn't the case though.

 

What do you mean by this? Did Belarus get a choice? Much of Ukraine made their choice when they ousted Putin’s dog. And made it again when electing Poroshenko and again with Zelinskyy

 

What I mean is that many countries don't want to be in NATO.

 

Example of a country that doesn’t want to be in NATO and is/was forced to join? Switzerland has been surrounded by NATO for decades. Seems like they very much have a choice. Sure NATO would like them to join same with the rest of Europe, but they aren’t forced to. If they are I would love to see the evidence.

 

I....never said that?

This was your original post buddy.

Literally nothing in here about being forced to join anything. Someone else wanna help me out? Cause I don't see it.

 

Okay sorry than we agree I think? Also that wasn’t my original post. But okay.

 

I don't understand, then. I was responding to the post about being NATO's friend. You jumped in then and are acting as if I was responding to something different. At no point did I talk about being forced to join NATO.

 

I think the point they are making is:

There are several recent examples of countries that have faced military retaliation for seeking closer ties to the NATO bloc. I am not aware of nations that have faced military retaliation for seeking closer ties with Russia. Could you share those that you know of?