“Tragically, the Western leaders and diplomats who are right now trying to stave off a Russian invasion of Ukraine still think they live in a world where rules matter, where diplomatic protocol is useful, where polite speech is valued,” The Atlantic says. “All of them think that w[...]
Archive for the ‘Russia’ Category
February 12th, 2022 - 9:54 pm § in Russia
Putin’s yacht
As of 2018, Putin’s government salary was about $300,000 a year (details here), so either he has other sources of income (e.g., corruption), or he paid for this 270-foot, $100 million, luxuriously appointed (e.g. pool, marble bathrooms) motor yacht (details here) with a no-payments loan. Retur[...]
How Biden deals with Putin
Biden is something of a Ukraine expert, and now a negotiator with expert knowledge of Putin, having been deeply involved with both for many years. When serving as Obama’s vice president, he made numerous trips to Ukraine at the time it was breaking free of Russian domination under a pro-Moscow[...]
February 7th, 2022 - 4:15 pm § in Foreign Affairs, Russia
Hey Vlad, you sure about this?
“Intercepted communications … revealed that some Russian officials have worried that a large-scale invasion of Ukraine would be costlier and more difficult than … Putin and other Kremlin leaders realize,” CNN reported on Monday, February 7, 2022, just days before Russia is ex[...]
Biden’s flacks flub Press Relations 101
In this video, veteran reporter Matt Lee asks Ned Price (profile here), a retired CIA analyst who’s now the State Department’s spokesman, for “evidence” that Russia is making a propaganda film faking a Ukraine attack against Russia in order to create a pretext for a Russian i[...]
Will any Russians be left to invade Ukraine?
“MOSCOW — Russia’s daily count of new coronavirus infections surged to more than 121,000 on Sunday, an eightfold increase compared with the beginning of the month as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads through the country,” ABC News reported on Sunday, January 30, 2[...]
Things could get ugly for Russian invaders
Ukraine’s military can’t match Russia’s for heavy hardware like ships, aircraft, tanks, and artillery (not to mention tactical nukes). But how do they use that military power against angry Ukrainian civilians with guns, who could make life a bleeding hell for Russian occupiers? And[...]
5-minute Ukraine briefing
I’m pretty certain there’s going to be a war. And although I hate to say this, a quick conquest of Ukraine by the Russian army might be the best thing for world peace, because a protracted conflict may not end like the Soviet-Afghanistan fiasco did; Putin might respond to unexpected setb[...]
January 26th, 2022 - 10:01 pm § in Foreign Affairs, Russia
Can Ukraine be defended?
From the map below (click on it to enlarge), it doesn’t look like it, as two-thirds of the country is a salient. A topo map of Ukraine (here) isn’t encouraging; except for the Carpathian mountains in the west, the landscape is mostly plains, steppes, and plateaus (details here). Harsh wi[...]
The world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons is right under Seattle’s nose
At least, that’s what this article says: “Bangor, Washington, now houses the largest single nuclear weapons site in the world … holding roughly 25% of the United States’ 9,962 nuclear warheads.” Bangor, of course, is the home base of America’s ballistic-missile submar[...]