Helping Ukraine win is a path to peace not war - it wants nothing from Russia's vast territory - as Russia escalates its rain of bombs on civilians - Ukraine hits only military targets in Russia
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You may find it easier to read via this separate contents and graphics page:
See also this page which has just the nuclear war debunks:
This is a fact check to help people scared by Putin’s lies which are hugely amplified by the Western media just for clicks and views. They also don’t do any fact-checking of his lies.
The only escalation is by Russia hitting Ukraine more and more. Putin is using Western media to confuse us and turn everything upside down to the way it is.
The truth is:
Ukraine is fighting for its freedom.
Russia is only fighting to try to add one more smaller region to its vast territory
Ukraine’s victory plan is just
a plan to stop this invasion and protect its freedom and independence.
Putin can end the war at any moment and lose NOTHING from its vast territory before the war. Ukraine will no longer need its border territory in Kursk oblast to protect itself once it has signed a peace deal and is on its way to join NATO.
The only reason Ukraine wants to join NATO is because
Russia invaded Ukraine only because it is NOT in NATO
It didn’t invade the tiny Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who don’t have a single fighter jet or tank between them because they are in NATO.
When you see this the whole war becomes far less scary because you can see Russia is not threatened at all by this war.
I find many people think either Russia or Ukraine has to surrender for the war to end. If that was true there is no way Ukraine could win.
But no. All Russia needs to do is to give up on Putin's objective to add Ukraine to the Russian Federation. That is a win for Ukraine. So Ukraine CAN win.
We see this also in Putin’s behaviour. The only times he starts to think about peace are when Russia is losing. He came closest to a genuine peace treaty suggestion just after his biggest defeat after the battle of Kyiv.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Why Ukraine’s victory plan is a path to peace not war
Slow Ukrainian drones 18th Step 2024
Nearly 30 kilotons of bombs destroyed saving thousands of lives
First ATACMS in Russia, 19th Nov. 2024. Blowing up bombs meant for Ukraine.
Russia is HUGE just wants to add one more region to its vast territorySmaller Ukraine defending from increasing rain of bombs.
Ukraine CAN win without taking ANYTHING from Russia.
All it wants is for Russia to leave and stop the bombing.
Small Ukraine defending from rain of bombs
Map combines Google Maps Toropets 56°30'00.0"N 31°43'15.0"E · 56.500000, 31.720833
Google Maps Karachev Karachev · Bryansk Oblast, Russia, 242500
Photos:
ATACMS Ukraine Battle Map (@ukraine_map) on X
Damage assessment photos from: Thread by @DefenceHQ on Thread Reader App
Google Maps Karachev Karachev · Bryansk Oblast, Russia, 242500
Toropets Assessment of Other Key GRAU Arsenals As Big as in Toropets Within Ukraine's Reach | Defense Express
So please don’t be scared by all this NONSENSE in the mainstream media which re-runs Putin’s propaganda because he carefully tailors it to hit headlines.
If you haven’t read it already see my:
The aim of this blog post is to fact check some of Putin’s numerous lies and false beliefs spread in the media and believed by the people we help as fact checkers to help scared people.
Ukraine is responding to a big increase in bombing by Russia in the last few weeks and the new ATACMS permission can help STOP the bombs
For those who don't follow the war, what most don't realize is that Putin has been increasing his attacks on Ukraine more and more. NOTHING TO DO WITH BIDEN'S PERMISSION.
There are air raid sirens nearly every day now. For instance this was 3.27 am last night in Kyiv.
So you'd be trying to sleep and be woken up by the air raid sirens. Then you decide whether to stay in your house or to move to some shelter.
It is like in the Blitz in WW2 in London. When Ukrainians hear that sound they know that bombs are on their way. Usually small Shahed drones but sometimes big hypersonic missiles. Patriot shoots down nearly all the hypersonic missiles. They hit before you hear them.
The people to be concerned about are the civilians in Ukraine. NOT NATO members.
This is what Zelensky says:
You can watch that video here . Thread by @ZelenskyyUa on Thread Reader App with photos and videos of some of the strikes in the previous week in Ukraine.
QUOTE STARTS
Over the past week, Russia has launched over 800 KAB-guided aerial bombs, nearly 460 attack drones, and more than 20 missiles, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Nov. 24.
“The air raid siren has sounded almost daily across Ukraine this week. Only last night, our air defense forces managed to shoot down about 50 attack drones,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, sharing a video showing Russian attacks across the country.
On the morning of Nov. 21, Russia unveiled a new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), dubbed "Oreshnik," in an attack targeting the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.
“Ukraine is not a testing ground for weapons. Ukraine is a sovereign, independent state. Yet Russia persists in its attempts to destroy our people, spread fear and panic, and weaken us,” Zelensky said.
⚡️ Russia attacked Ukraine with over 800 KAB bombs, 460 drones, 20 missiles this week, Zelensky says.
“The air raid siren has sounded almost daily across Ukraine this week,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Nov. 24.
. Russia attacked Ukraine with over 800 KAB bombs, 460 drones, 20 missiles this week, Zelensky says
Those KAB bombs are the glide bombs. So that's over 100 glide bombs a DAY near the front lines. And it is 50 shahed drones a day. And nearly 3 missiles a day on average.
At the start of the year it was one drone and missile attack every week or less and occasional glide bombs. But those numbers keep increasing.
Over the summer he destroyed ALL of Ukraine's fossil fuel power stations. They can't rebuild them because as soon as they try he will demolish them again with bombs.
They get their electricity now from the connection to Europe, and from their nuclear and hydro plants.
But Putin is not satisfied with destroying all the fossil fuel plants. He tries to disconnect the nuclear and hydro plants from the grid and to bomb the substations so they can't distribute the power.
He is also stepping up the frequency of attacks. Continuously manufacturing glide bombs and Shahed drones and dropping them now every day.
This is the real escalation. Not anything Biden did
The ATACMS are
NOT to destroy the Russian power grid.
NOT to attack Russian civilians in their homes..
The ATACMS are
to protect Ukraine by blowing up the bombs before the Russians can drop them on Ukraine
Which Ukraine is already doing with its drones but can do much more effectively with ATACMS
They are also for other ways to defend Ukraine..
This makes Ukraine safer.
Ukrainians are the ones the bombs are falling on.
And now that Ukraine can hit these piles of bombs in Russia, they will
blow up lots of them in Russia that would otherwise explode in Ukraine.
Eventually force Russia to move them more than 300 km from Ukraine which will make it far harder for them to drop them on Ukraine because their planes have to fly further each time.
So it is DE-ESCALATORY.
Meanwhile
Any of us living outside Ukraine are at no risk from those glide bombs and Shahed drones that Russia keeps dropping on Ukraine.
We have NO RISK in NATO countries. Putin CANT attack NATO.
But he CAN attack Ukraine
Putin is just lying when he says the US and UK are fighting in Ukraine - they are just suppliers and are LESS involved if they put no restrictions on the weapons - example of US selling ATACMS to Singapore
Putin wants the US and UK to tell Ukraine they can only use their weapons against targets in Ukraine.
Imagine if they said the same to tiny Singapore. The US sold ATACMS to Singapore. If they told Singapore "You can only use these ATACMS despite their range of 300 km only on targets inside tiny Singapore" - would Singapore buy them? Of course not.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Putin's request to Biden to prohibit Ukraine from using its weapons to hit any targets outside Ukraine was always VERY BIZARRE
Singapore would NEVER buy ATACMS if it could only use them to hit targets in Singapore.
That the USA provides Singapore with ATACMS without this bizarre restriction does NOT make the USA a combatant in any war where Sinpaore might defend itself with ATACMS.
It's just the same with Ukraine it is a very bizarre restriction and Putin has no right to make this demand under the international Law of Armed Conduct, or the UN Charter or any ethical reason.
It is just a new rule he invented from nowhere to try to restrain Ukraine.
Nevertheless, somehow he managed to convince Biden to put this nonsensical restriction on Ukraine's use of the ATACMS and so defended his stockpiles of bombs just outside the Ukraine border putting them off limits for the ATACMS and taking away most of the value of the missiles.
That is all that is going on here.
The Ukraine conflict is NOT global - doesn’t even involve ANY other countries on Ukraine’s side
This is based on Putin's Pants on Fire claim that US soldiers are needed to fire ATACMS, obvious nonsense since the US sells the ATACMS conventional ballistic to countries like Singapore and the UAE and no country would buy weapons from the US that only American soldiers can fire. Similar false claim that British soldiers are required to fire the Stormshadow conventional cruise missiles, again nonsense, they are sold to countries like the India and UAE (under the French name Scalp-EG) who wouldn't buy them if they could only be fired by UK soldiers.
It is utter nonsense. Putin made this "Pants on Fire" claim months ago.
For some reason nobody in the Western media corrects him or other Russians who make this claim even though it is clearly false if you just stop and think for a minute.
If you know enough about Stormshadow to know that it is sold it to other countries you have to know that there is no way that the UK or France is involved in firing the Stormshadow missile every time India or the UAE fires them.
The Ukrainians need a small amount of training which isn't hard for them as they fire many different missile systems, and then they can fire them themselves just as India and the UAE do.
I think it is about time Western media got in fact checkers for Russian lies just like they do fact checks of the lies of US presidential candidates or UK politicians.
And France exported the Scalp missile (their name for stormshadow) to countries such as India. Does that mean that if India uses it to hit a target in Pakistan, say that France is in conflict with Pakistan? Of course not. It is just a weapon supplier to India.
Zelensky and Ukrainians DO NOT WANT WAR - they want peace for the same reasons anyone would in their situation - an end to the deaths and falling bombs
Zelensky and Ukrainians do NOT want NATO soldiers for the same reasons you do not want it. They are not mad. They are just defending themsleves against an invasion by Russia. Both on the front line and also bombs falling every day now on civlians throughout Ukraine.
It is Russia escalating not Ukraine. The civilians are living in a time similar to the Blitz in London right now. Air raid sirens nearly every night.
They want to END the war as much as ANYONE. But they can't because Russia is the attacker and they can't stop Russia attacking them except by fighting back.|
Josep Borrell had a good way to put it:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
"In my opinion Ukraine should have the capability to target the source of these attacks— to strike the archers, not just the arrows."
- Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European CommissionPhotograph: . File:Josep Borrell (49468484246).jpg - Wikimedia Commons
That is an excellent short summary of both the international law of armed conduct, the UN charter, and the ethics. of it.
For details see his:
. Ukraine/Middle East wars: International law is a must—not a maybe
This is done DEFENSIVELY. So you only hit the archer after they have started firing arrows at you.
This is now NATO’s policy too.
General Bauer put it like this:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Attacks on Ukraine don’t attack NATO
To prevent Russia attacking NATO:
New NATO policy - still take first blow - then take out attacking weapons system.
TRANSCRIPT:
The idea was we are a defensive Alliance so we will only sit and wait until we're attacked and then when we're attacked we will be able to shoot down the arrows that come to us.
But it is smarter not only to do that but also to attack the Archer that is in Russia if Russia attacks us.
So, you need to have a combination of deep Precision strike with which you can take out the weapon systems that are used to attack us.
Of course be because we're a defensive Alliance we will have to take the first blow. So Russia will start the conflict because we are not going to attack Russia out of nothing.
So we will need more air defense, that's one of the lessons from Ukraine, and at the same time we are going to invest in the Deep Precision strike
- General Bauer
END TRANSCRIPT
As a defensive alliance, NATO will NEVER do a pre-emptive strike. But they have changed their policy
if Russia attacks them with conventional missiles
they don't just shoot down the missiles but also strike back at the system attacking them.
So, just as for Ukraine, targets would include fighter jets taking off to drop glide bombs on a NATO country, the airbase they take off from, or warships firing hypersonic missiles at a NATO country and so on until Russia stops the attack.
Any such incident would be over quickly.
It's a deterrent - by clarifying this policy they deter Russia from trying to do such a thing.
The western media is VERY MISLEADING. They present it as if it was a tit for tat retaliation. Ukraine is NOT RETALIATING. Ukraine is NOT targeting civilians in Russia
Ukraine is NOT asking Russia to surrender - it is asking it to stop attacking and invading
Also Ukraine IS NOT ASKING RUSSIA TO SURRENDER. That would be absurd.
I explained that in the cover graphic for this blog post.
Russia invaded Ukraine to try to add Ukraine to the already vast Russian Federation.
Ukraine is defending itself because it doesn't want to be part of Russia.
The war ends when Russia gives up its attempt to add Ukraine to Russia. Putin can end it by giving up on the invasion.
So Russia's choices are
Continue to attempt to add Ukraine to the Russian Federation or
Give up on the attempt.
Ukraine's choices are
Surrender and agree to be part of the Russian Federation or
Fight back until they can force Russia to give up on the attempt by making it too costly or impossible for them to continue or by forcing them out of Ukraine by military force.
Russia is trying to coerce Ukraine into surrender through terror - which naturally lead to even the many pro-Russia Ukrainians joining the fight against Russia
And Russia is trying to persuade or rather coerce Ukraine to become part of Russia by
Abducting very young children of Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine and bringing them up as Russians in Russian families
Slowly advancing through Donbas demolishing Ukrainian cities street by street with shelling, in the process destroying all the local businesses and also historical buildings and churches.
A terror campaign of using bombs to destroy all the Ukrainian fossil fuel power stations and continually destroy substations so that Ukrainians will have a cold winter without heating (since most Ukrainians use electricity for heat)
A terror campaign of dropping bombs on Ukrainian civilians.
Destroying Ukrainiain museums and artefacts and looting the museums and removing them to Russia.
Permitting their soldiers to torture Ukrainians in all the places Ukraine has liberated.
These methods of trying to coerce Ukriane to become part of Russia naturally lead to Ukrainians being more and more determined NOT to be part of Russia - as you can well imagine.
Russia was able to take over Crimea quickly because they didn’t use these methods.
There was and is a lot of pro Russian sentiment in Ukraine.
When Russia took over Crimea they did it in a subtle way, quickly and with almost no violence.
But the way they are trying to take over Ukraine is NOT winning them friends even amongst very pro Russian former supporters in Ukraine.
So this is why Ukraine fights back.
This is also why most people in Ukraine now including the ones that are still very pro Russia do NOT want to be part of Russia when coerced in this way.
Ukrainians do NOT want to retaliate - they have many relatives and friends in Russia and want to protect Russian civilians
Ukraine is
NOT fighting as warmongers.
NOT opposed to Russian culture or ideas
NOT because they like fighting or being bombed
JUST To defend their way of life, culture, their own lives and the lives of those they care for.
The LAST thing they would want is to inflict similar suffering on Russians. It is awful for them and they do NOT want this for the Russians - many of them have close connections and relatives in Russia.
They just want to destroy Russia's capabilities to attack Ukraine. With the minimum risk of harm to Russian civilians.
Ukraine is NOT targeting civilians in Russia, unlike Russia which IS targeting civilians in Ukraine. It only wants these missiles to hit MILITARY targets, the archers in Russia that are attacking Ukraine. Plus their arrows and bows too.
The numerous FALSE media stories of Ukraine targeting civilians are either
Russian air defences shooting down a missile or drone from Ukraine and the debris falls in a civilian area of a city or settlement.
Russian glide bombs dropped on Russian cities by mistake - early on especially they often malfunctioned with the wings not opening so they fell down and landed in Russian cities near the border like Belgorod.
Russia blames all these incidents on Ukraine to cover up their own incompetence. But we can be certain they are Russian because of the size of the explosions (far bigger than anything Ukraine could do at that distance at that time) and because the bombs hit the buildings from the Russian rather than the Ukrainian side.
See my:
Ukraine targets the archers, their shields, their bows and arrows and the bow and arrow stockpiles and manufacturers in Josep Borell’s analogy
Ukraine used the ATACMS in its first strike on Russia to blow up some of the bombs in the 67th Grau ammunition site in Bryansk oblast. So they were blowing up bombs that Russia was stockpiling to drop on Ukraine.
That's like targeting a stockpile of arrows.
You could hardly have a more DEFENSIVE target. Every explosion in the munition depot is an explosion that would otherwise have happened in Ukraine.
. Ukraine strikes Russian ammunition depot in Bryansk Oblast, military says
Also Ukraine itself had hit the same munitions site with their own slow drones over a month earlier on 1st Oct.
https://x.com/Tendar/status/1843879823019782425
About the 67th Arsenal of GRAU
QUOTE One of the closest is the 67th GRAU arsenal, situated near Karachev in the Bryansk region, just 114 km from Ukraine. This facility, right next to a town of 20,000 people, spans 3.5 square kilometers. Satellite imagery from 2021 shows some ammunition was stored in the open air.
. Assessment of Other Key GRAU Arsenals As Big as in Toropets Within Ukraine's Reach | Defense Express
Ukraine has just now used ATACMS to destroy an S-400 radar system, a relatively modern Russian air defence system (the most modern is the S-500 which it has also often destroyed)
QUOTE STARTS
The strike was carried out using three ATACMS ballistic missiles. The air defense system was in a non-combat state, undergoing repairs.
As a result of the strike, the 92N6E radar station and two launchers were destroyed. Five officers from the division were killed (including the commander and the chief of staff), and three employees of AO "Almaz-Antey" received fatal injuries.
. WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) on X
Then the same night, a military airfield in Kursk oblast
. WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) on X
Ukraine used its first stormshadow on Nov 20th in Russia to hit a command post at a time when Russian and North Korean command staff were gathering together - this is a legitimate target so long as they were actually involved in directing the war which they presumably were.
The stormshadow is optimized for penetrating bunkers.
QUOTE STARTS
As Defense Express previously speculated, the nature of the target and the deployment of multiple cruise missiles strongly suggested the objective was a gathering of senior russian and North Korean command staff.
The casualties reportedly included numerous russian officers from the Southern and Eastern Military Districts. Among them was Lieutenant General Valery Solodchuk, First Deputy Commander of the Leningrad Military District and former commander of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR in 2014.
It is a clear military target and there is no question at all about the legitimacy.
UKRAINE did this. The UK is NOT involved.
The Scalp EG / Stormshadow are exported to places like India and UAE and the ATACMS to places alike Singapore and UAE. Just as Singpaore OF COURSE fires its own ATACMS and OF COURSE is permited to fire them at targets outside tiny Singapore if it was ever attacked - it shoudl be the same for Ukraine.
If its suppleirs set rules for when and where it can use their missiles that makes them MORE involved than if they just say as the UK and France did "Here you are use them as you see fit".
Biden and Macron and Starmer dropping their restrictions are making their countries LESS INVOLVED from the perspective of international law and the UN Charter, as just suppliers supplying a counry for its legitimate right to self defence and not in any way participating in the conflict.
The news is all BACK TO FRONT here.
And there is NO WAY that Russia attacks the UK which is way way out of its league as part of NATO.
Putin will just respond as he did when Ukraine blew up 30 kilotons of Russian explosives in the Toropets bomb store. Just hide the news from the Russian people and pretend nothing is happening.
All Ukraine is doing is to attack military sites in Russia that are directly used to bomb its cities and kill its civilians and its soldiers. This is just the sovereign right of an invaded country to defend itself under the UN charter.
Ukraine is NOT attacking civilians in Russia. It is ONLY attacking things like:
fighter jets and bombers that attack Ukraine every day with missiles with a range of thousands of kilometers.
storage depots for Shahed drones.
storage depots for glide bombs
munitions dumps with millions of shells and thousands of missiles that Russia uses to attack Ukraine
fuel depots
oil refineries which make the fuel for tanks fighter jets etc and which also are the main source of revenue for the Russian military
concentrations of Russian soldiers that are fighting ukraine or on their way to fight in Ukraine.
airfields that Russia has just across the border in Russia which its bombers and fighter jets take off from every day to drop one to three ton glide bombs on Ukrainian soldiers and civilian buildings in cities.
bridges that are used to supply shells, soldiers, tanks, fuel etc to the front line
roads and railway lines that are also used to supply the front line
command posts that are used to organize the fight and issue commands to the front line.
industrial buildings directly used to make or store the bombs that are dropped on Ukraine or the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles etc.
air defence systems that protect all these military targets from attack
artillery firing at Ukraine across the border
warships in the Black Sea that fire missiles at Ukraine from a great distance.
tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other ground vehicles that soldiers use to attack Ukraine.
fighter jets, helicopters, military supply aircraft and bombers that are used every day to attack Ukraine when they are in the air over Russia before they reach Ukraine.
ALL OF THESE are legitimate targets whether they are in occupied Ukraine or in Russia. A tank that is driving towards the border is as much a threat before as after it crosses the border
And Ukraine is
ALREADY attacking ALL OF THESE with its own drones and missiles, hitting targets as far away as the Arctic circle and the other side of Moscow.
Before this permission it was also attacking all of these when they are within a range of 80 km across the border or 80 km from their front line in Kursk oblast with the US supplied HiMARS launcher anbd GLMRS and when within 25 km, with the M777 Howitzzers and the 155 mm shells all supplied by the USA.
Ukraine have ALREADY killed thousands of the Russian soldiers on Russian soil with US supplied tanks infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers and GLMRS missiles in Kursk oblast.
Giving Ukriane permission to use one more missile system with a range of 300 km much smaller than their longest distance drone is NOT in any way a threat to the Russian Federation.
Though Ukraine has drones that can reach the Kremlin it's never tried to attack Putin and all this is just defence. Ukraine doesn't have the slightest interest or the capability of taking over Russia. All it is doing is defending itself. If Putin's army leaves Ukraine the war is over.
Putin and the Russians know this and they are just using empty threats to try to get Ukraine's allies to stop supplying an important and effective missile system which would slow down or even halt Russia's slow one mile per week advances in Ukraine and make it harder for Russia to conduct the war crimes of destroying Ukraine's civilian electricity grid and directly targeting civilian buildings with glide bombs.
And if Putin did use a single nuke against NATO, goodbye his Black Sea fleet on day 1 not from nukes, from conventional explosives.
NATO would have control over the Russian air space by the next day with their F-35s. The objective of almost the entire world, China and India included would be to make sure Russia never uses its nukes again. There is no way that China or India could endorse Russia if it used a nuke in response to Ukrainians attacking military targets in Russia with US supplied weapons.
There is just NO WAY that the risk averse Putin does such a dumb thing or that his generals obey him if he does.
There is just so much clickbait sensationalist BS in the Western media about this, and when you look at it, then the actual permission is nothing
It is nowhere near enough indeed. If Ukraine had got this permission when it first used ATACMS in the fall of 2023 it might have significantly flipped the war because back then Russia had hundreds of fighter jets in airfields near to Ukraine.
The ATACMS could have surprised Russia and destroyed hundreds of fighter jets in a few days and significantly deterred Russia and also destroyed many munition dumps and fuel dumps.
Also, if Ukraine had been given unlimited permission to use them in any way that is acceptable according to the law of armed conduct, the effect on the command posts that are running the war would have been devastating. It would have been like when they destroyed the Black Sea headquarters in Sevastopol but much more so.
But instead Ukraine is using them for the first time in Russian territory, after months of debate by the US and slowly increasing so as not to alarm the Russians and giving them time to slowly adapt, change the way it does things and continue the war in a slightly different way moving assets just out of reach of ATACMS before it can hit them.
That is why people now say it won't have much effect on the war. It is hard to say.
Ukraine thinks it can still have a big effect so we'll see. Zelensky says this is part of his Victory plan.
Zelensky says this is part of his Victory plan - and that strikes are not announced in advance
This suggests that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the various rumours. Whatever permission Biden has given to Ukraine is something only he and Ukraine knows.
QUOTE STARTS
The plan to strengthen Ukraine is the Victory Plan which I presented to our partners. One of its key points is long-range capabilities for our army.
Today, there’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective[appropriate] actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. They certainly will"
. 🌊 R Saddler (@Politics_PR) on X
So - Ukraine still thinks that this permission now, much later, is still a way to win against Russia - to push it out of most or all occupied Ukraine.
Putin may well think Ukraine has a victory plan too - his command centers are especially vulnerable to Stormshadow
From Putin’s response he may well agree with Zelensky. This permission could turn the war around and lead to Ukraine winning. Which remember for Putin just means he has to give up on his plan to annex Ukraine into the far larger Russian Federation.
Putin knows that with the ATACMS and Stormshadow, Ukraine could make it impossible for him to keep stockpiles of bombs within 300 km of Ukraine or fly planes from within 300 km or even to command the war from command posts within 300 km.
There is a really big command post in Rostov on Don.
The Stormshadows were used to destroy the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea and nowadays it is impossible for Russia to set up a command post anywhere in Crimea. This shows the moment a Stormshadow missile went through the roof of the Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol. Sept 2023.
The Ukrainians claimed to have hit a gathering of Russian officials directing the Black Sea Fleet.
This was part of a series of missile strikes that eventually forced the Black Sea and its HQ to leave Crimea entirely as nowhere there was safe for either its ships or its commanders.
With the Stormshadow and ATACMS Ukraine could destroy the military HQ of the entire Ukraine war operation in Rostov-upon-Don just like it destroyed the HQ of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
This is the building that memorably Prikorvsky took over in his short lived rebellion against Putin.
If Ukraine attacked that building at an awkward point for Russia it could seriously impede on their attempts to stop a counteroffensive.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
ATACMS could be programmed with google maps and streetview
HQ of Rusisa’s war campaign in Ukraine is within ATACMS reach in Rostov-upon-Don
Google maps: 47°13'25.1"N 39°42'17.6"E
This is from the ISW interactive map here
It is one of many targets in Rostov on Don
Larger view:
. Interactive Map: Hundreds of Known Russian Military Objects are in Range of ATACMS
If the same happens in Rostov on Don as happened to the Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol, Putin's generals will have to direct the war from more than 300 km from the front line.
This would surely seriously impede his ability to fight the war.
Ukraine of course has been vulnerable to similar strikes from Russia since day 1 of the war. So they have already adapted. They no longer command the war from big buildings like that, their command posts are distributed, underground, hard to find or to hit, and hardened.
But Putin has fought this war so far with huge command posts with dozens of generals with their computers and components in ordinary buildings above the ground and easy targets.
Also the Stormshadow is very precise and can hit even deeply buried command posts.
But Russia has had the luxury so far of directing this war from big office buildings and obvious structures like the Black Sea Fleet and the Rostov Southern MIlitary HQ,
So it is not like this would stop Russia fighting. But if it happened at a critical moment for Russia it could put them in disarray at a time when they need to coordinate a response to a counteroffensive.
Or Ukraine could use the threat to do this to encourage Russia to seek a genuine way forward to peace.
So - I don’t understand why Western commentators keep saying permission to hit command posts in Russia will have no impact on the war.
And attacking NATO would NOT solve this problem of the vulnerability of his command posts, the fuel depots, munitions dumps etc to ATACMS.
Rather that is the easiest way to lose very quickly. Given that he is concerned about Ukraine with 300 km ATACMS and Stormshadow, the LAST thing he wants is for them to get the 2,500 km Tomahawk or for NATO to get involved with their near radar-invisible F-35s.
He has an easy solution to all his predicaments, to withdraw his soldiers from Ukraine and to give up on his objective to force Ukraine to join the Russian Federation by military means.
If Ukraine does indeed have a victory plan then this will happen eventually. But Putin can be expected to try everything else first.
If Ukraine had this ability a year earlier in 2023 or even in 2022 it could have won easily - but it may still be a significant advantage - Zelensky clearly thinks so
A year ago before Ukraine developed its own long range capabilities to the extent it has today and before Russia adapted to the extent it has today, this permission and the supply of ATACMS would have had a big effect. And Putin would NOT HAVE USED NUKES which NEVER MAKES ANY SENSE. He would just have possibly lost the war and withdrawn from Ukraine depending on how many the US sent and how effective they were.
Mitch McConnel has been asking for US to send ATACMS to Ukraine since September 2022.
It got them for the first time in September 2023 but only a small number and then the funding bill was stopped in the house. It got more in spring 2024 but with this nonsense restriction that they can't use them across the border into Russia. It's taken to November 2024 to get permission to use them across the border into Russia.
So why did the Western leaders hesitate so much? Not out of fear of nukes - or they’d have told us how to protect ourselves - likely concerns of losing support of their electorate - much less of a concern for Putin
This is how the generals and military analysts I follow see it, a bizarre senseless restriction that has prolonged the war for years. Which is in place because Biden is timid. As is Olaf Scholtz.
I think both know that Putin would NOT use nukes. On reflection I think they may just be timid because of this hysterical reaction of the electorate and the news media whenever they cross one of Putin's arbitrary red lines fanned by Russian statements like this.
It makes more sense that Western legislators hold back on these permissions out of concern of the reactions of their media and their voters than any concern about a nuclear war themselves. Especially since they do NOT alert their population to prepare for a nuclear war as they would if they seriously thought it was a possibility.
Putin doesn't need to worry about the reaction of Russian media to what he says because he controls it. But democracies with free speech and free and fair elections do need to think about such things.
So that is all that is going on here. Putin is using the
Please don't be afraid yourself. There is nothing here to be scared of.
See my debunk here
In 2024, Ukraine hit many oil refineries first - then fuel depots - now stockpiles of bombs - at distance of hundreds of kilometers from their front line
Ukraine has been firing missiles at Russia since day 2 of the war on 25th February 2022, rarely in early 2022 but towards the end of 2022 often hit Russian radar systems with HARM anti-radar which is US supplied and homes in on radars to destroy them.
On Jan 2024 Ukraine had it's first spectacular attack on a gas terminal in St Petersberg, the second largest city in Russia. St Petersberg is also where Putin was born.
. Ukraine drones hit St Petersburg gas terminal in Russia
Then it started attacking oil refineries throughout Eastern and Central Russia.
This is the map as of April of this year
. Ukraine’s strikes against Russian oil refineries
Since then it's also hit the oil refinery in Moscow shown here as a potential target.
Russia can no longer refine oil anywhere within 1000 km of the Ukrainian front line. This means it has to export more crude oil and less of its refined oil which impacts on the finance of the war as the Russian government is largely funded by the oil revenue. It also makes it harder to refine oil internally for the war.
After that it started blowing up fuel depots. The biggest fuel depot fire burnt for 16 days.
The huge fuel tanks kept exploding one after another. You can't put out an oil or gasoline fire with water. On the first day they tried to put it out with water but it just made it worse.
Russia just had to watch and put out any secondary fires and wait for it to burn out.
~They were finally able to put it out after 16 days with most of the fuel gone
. Oil depot fire in Russia's Rostov Oblast extinguished after more than 2 weeks, authorities say
Then after that it started blowing up Russia's stockpiles of bombs.
This is the Toropets explosion in the cover image:
At 1:14 in you hear the local Russian officials telling us that everything is under control while you hear the explosions in the background
TEXT ON GRAPHIC (at 44 seconds in)
You hear the sound of explosions going off as they speak.
“The air defence system of the Ministry of Defence did its job.
Most of 30 kilotons of explosives blew up
How Russia responds to setbacks in the war - tells everyone that nothing is happening.
Ukraine now blows up those bombs regularly. These are all bombs that it plans to drop on Ukraine. Ukraine
Ukraine is now regularly using ATACMS against targets in Russia too to blow up bombs amongst other things.
So in short it's nothing. All Putin will do is to hide or downplay or excuse away any of these explosions or fires or yet more of his generals being killed. Just won't run the stories in Russian media.
NATO members are NOT going to send soldiers to fight in Ukraine - Poland couldn’t even send a humanitarian mission in 2022 to rescue the civilians in Mariupol
Poland wanted to send just a humanitarian mission into Ukraine to shepherd out the civilians trapped in Mariupol - this is back before Russia had completely encircled it. There was a motorway still going in that wasn't under Russian control in spring 2022. Some Ukrainians got out by car but others were shot in their cars so they were taking a big risk if they left by car. They got together a fleet of buses to leave but just before the civilians were about to get into the buses, Russia fired shells at them and destroyed them all.
Poland just wanted to send a humanitarian mission, some soldiers and relief workers to evacuate whatever was left of the original half a million population of Mariupol. Those soldiers would just be protection for the civilians.
But Germany and other countries in NATO vetoed it. Poland had to give up on the plan - it could have done it on its own, didn't need NATO permission but it would have been politically difficult. And the result is that at least 10,300 Mariupol citizens died from counting the number of individual graves in the mass graves which you can now see in satellite images around Mariupol, possibly far more.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Mass graves outside MariupolAssociated Press counts at least 10,300 graves - almost all will be civilians
In 2022, Poland wanted to send a humanitarian mission to evacuate them before Mariupol was completely encircled
But other NATO countries vetoed, and now they are in these mass graves.
NATO is VERY risk avers to the slightest risk of engaging with Russian soldiers
Photo from: How the AP estimated 10,300 new graves in occupied Mariupol
That shows you how hyper careful Ukraine's allies are.
There is no way that any UK or European soldiers will be involved in combat duty in Ukraine.
Zelensky needs equipment not soldiers - he could double his army and still be at less than a half of UK WW2 levels of conscription
Zelensky doesn't need soldiers he needs equipment. Ukraine with a million soldiers is still at only 2.5% of its population compared to nearly 25% for the UK in WW2
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
NASA, huge and powerful but very timid
Russia knows it can't use nukes in reality
Russia tiny and weak, bluffs as meaningless as soap bubbles
Even the Soviet Union had no way to win a war with nukes
Imagine if your team was invisible - how easily you could win a game of football.
That is how much better NATO's F-35 jets are than anything Russia has.
300+ F-35s (USA), 100+ F-35s (Europe).
Russia's 5th generation fighter jet is not ready for war and may never be (expensive technology to develop).
NATO's technology is vastly superior (one of many ways)
NATO: Population 967 million [it's 631 million leaving out USA] NATO: 3.5 million soldiers
Russia: Population 144 million, 0.9% = 1.32 million soldiers
Ukraine: 42 million, 2.1% = 900,000 soldiers
UK war levels of conscription ~12%.
US defence spending $883.7 billion, 3% of GDP
NATO European allies $380 billion, 2% of GDP
Russia: $112 billion, 6% of GDP.
Ukraine: $43.23 billion, 22.1% of GDP
Based on this image created by Dall-E via Bing Chat
American football photo from: BFile:US Navy 090608-N-3283P-018 The Yokosuka Seahawks face off against the Yokohama Harbors during the U.S. Forces Japan-American Football league at Yokosuka Field.jpg - Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_090608-N-3283P-018_The_Yokosuka_Seahawks_face_off_against_the_Yokohama_Harbors_during_the_U.S._Forces_Japan-American_Football_league_at_Yokosuka_Field.jpg
Putin head from this graphic flipped Vladimir_Putin_
For the details for all these figures see my:
BLOG For Russia to attack NATO is like a midget attacking a mammoth with soap bubbles - it can't do it
UK had 24.4% of the male population fighting in WW2. The percentages were similar in USA, and even higher in Germany and Axis countries.
. WWII: share of male population mobilized by country 1937-1945 | Statista
So that 2.5% fighting in Ukraine which would be about 5% of the male population is way below all out war levels of 24.4 %, which is nearly 5 times as much. .
Ukraine has nearly a million soldiers out of a population of 37 million still after the refugees and occupied territories are accounted for - and it has no conscription below age 25 and most men over 25 are not conscripted either.
Zelensky could conscript 3 million more soldiers and still be less than half the WW2 levels of conscription in the UK.
The reason he doesn’t do this is because
He wants to protect the Ukrainian economy so that it can rebuild fast when the war is over
His allies are not providing enough military supplies for millions more soldiers
Equipment matters far more than soldiers in a modern war - a few hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles and Putin would have to give up on the invasion
In a modern war equipment matters far more than numbers of soldiers. If this was a NATO country then a few pilots in ~F-35 fighter jets and the war would be over in a day or two. That shows how it is not about the numbers of soldiers but about what they are provided with. Ukraine could fly F-35s if its allies provided them and permitted Ukraine to recruit from retired F-35 fighter pilots in any of the many countries now that fly them.
Imagine how hard it would be to defend against supersonic potatoes? That is what the Russians would see in their radars if they were fighting a NATO country with F-35s
.
When you look for one of these F-35s on radar …
This is what you see: [large potato]
Russian radar operator (imagined): “What is that on the radar? A supersonic potato?”
Billie Flyn, F-35 test pilot on what it would do in Ukraine.
It would go in and kill every surface-to-air missile threat that was out there, and neutralize all the threats on the ground, and achieve air dominance because it would kill all the air-to-air assets also. Remember: we see them, they don’t see us. It’s like playing football, when one team’s invisible, and the other team is not….
Background photos: rightmost potato from: Potato var. Linda HC1 and F-35 at Edwards
This is Billie Flynn an F-35 test pilot interviewed by Aviation Today in April. He talks about how if F-35s were used in Ukraine, in a parallel world (not going to happen in this one) they would completely destroy all the Russian ground to air and air assets because they see the Russian assets before Russia can see their planes. They would quickly give Ukraine air dominance so it can attack Russia at will from the air with no opposition. That would end the war instantly, Russia would have no choice but to leave Ukraine.
F-35 would see all the enemy air-to-air threats and kill them all, plus completely neutralizing the surface-to-air missile threat to achieve air dominance. From that point, the forces can conduct their air-to-ground war. That’s what the F-35 was meant to do. So, in a parallel world, because we do not want to be dragged into the Ukraine, the F-35 would completely destroy the Russian forces
…
The F-35 is exceptionally capable at executing the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses mission set. It would go in and kill every surface-to-air missile threat that was out there, and neutralize all the threats on the ground, and achieve air dominance because it would kill all the air-to-air assets also. Remember: we see them, they don’t see us.
It’s like playing football, when one team’s invisible, and the other team is not with a gross advantage on behalf of the F-35. F-35 would see all the enemy air-to-air threats and kill them all, plus completely neutralizing the surface-to-air missile threat to achieve air dominance. From that point, the forces can conduct their air-to-ground war. That’s what the F-35 was meant to do. So, in a parallel world, because we do not want to be dragged into the Ukraine, the F-35 would completely destroy the Russian forces.. F-35: Capabilities, Missions, Kinematics, Role In Ukrainian Crisis And Beyond. Interview With Billie Flynn
The 4th generation F-35 has a radar cross section of 0.005 square meters or about 7 cm by 7 cm, 2.8 inches by 2.8 inches similar to a large potato. It's like trying to detect supersonic potatoes in flight. The Mig-29 has a cross section of 3 square meters so about the size of a normal door. The F-16c is between the two, 1.2, smaller than a door.
Putin can't even handle Ukraine on its own and worries about Ukraine's allies giving it ATACMs missiles.
The ATACMS are not some big new modern tech idea - ATACMs are 1980s technology.
Yet, more than 30 years later Russia still can't defend against it. That is how far advanced NATO is compared to Russia. Rusisa's technology is barely developed beyond the Soviet Era for two reasons
The oligarchs siphoning away a lot of the money into their own pockets
Russia has a very weak economy anyway given the vastness of the country, a GDP between Italy and Germany for a country that is as big as the EU
Ukraine could win very fast if Ukraine had the Tomahawk cruise missiles that the US uses to fire at the Houthi rebels in Yemen - the war would likely be over tomorrow.
Zelensky would say to Putin "get your army out of Ukraine or I'll sink your Black Sea fleet in its entirety". He knows he can't protect his fleet from the Tomahawk cruise missiles - and he'd leave Ukraine.
The US uses these against the Houthi rebels in Yemen for instance.
Any NATO country would have access to these on day 1 but Ukraine’s allies feel they are too powerful for Ukraine.
Ukraine uses similar weapons with a much shorter range against Russia in Crimea (such as the UK Stormshadow and its own Neptune) and Russia is unable to stop them.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Range of the US tomahawk cruise missile with a half ton payload like the ATACMS, travels at nearly 1000 km / hour, range 2,400 km.
Proven ability to get through Russia's S-400 system
With the current state of Russian air defences, teh US could sink the entire Russian Black Sea fleet in a few hours but doesn't give this capability to ukraine.
Details of the missile here: Tomahawk (missile) - Wikipedia
Circle drawn with this free online map circle drawing tool Radius Around a Point on a Map
Russia seems unable even to stop modified microlight hobbyist aircraft loaded with explosives! This is about how Ukraine is using modified ultralights as long range attack drones. Ukraine appears to deploy modified A-22 ultralights as suicide UAVs
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Russia's air defences are so degraded that Ukraine is able to fly ultralights through them without getting shot down.
Replace pilot by explosives and remote control, and you have a drone that can evade the Russian air defences and bomb a Russian oil refinery 1000s of kilometres from Ukraine.
Yet Russia claims FALSELY it can "escalate" and win a war against not just Ukraine but NATO as well. Just bluffs and bulls**t.
Graphic shows the File:Huntair.pathfinder.arp.jpg
Replace pilot and passenger by explosives and remote control and you have a drone that can evade the Russian air defences and head off and bomb a refinery deep in Russia.
Video showing some of the drones attacking oil refineries Ukraine’s AI-enabled drones are trying to disrupt Russia’s energy industry. So far, it’s working | CNN Business Bear in mind that to do this it has flown slowly at about the speed of a fast car over Russia for many hours and not been shot down by air defences or even fighter jets.
In the secret Victory plan they were part of negotiations- Zelensky asked the US to give them to Ukraine with the promise that Ukraine would only deploy them if Russia refused to end its war and de-escalate.
By giving them to Ukraine then they become something that Ukraine uses to achieve negotiations rather than the US threatening to use them.
But the US told him that it was an escalation to do this and so refused.
So Trump must have promised Zelensky something that makes him stronger than Putin to an extent Biden never did.
That is the only thing that makes sense here.
TWEET STARTS
⚡️How to understand Tomahawk messages? This was confidential information between Ukraine and the White House, - Zelenskyi.
"It turns out that there is nothing confidential between the partners," the president said.
Ukraine has already destroyed a third of the Black Sea Fleet without the Tomahawks.
As we’ve seen, if Ukraine had these missiles, the same ones the US uses against Houthis in Yemen, they could sink Russia's entire Black Sea fleet in a few hours since we now know that the Russian air defences can't stop NATO cruise missiles - and it could destroy many high-value targets within 2,400 km of the front line.
It would likely end the war immediately if Ukraine had them.
The Black Sea fleet is very important to Russia historically and culturally as well as militarily.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is of huge national pride to the Russians. Ukraine has already sunk its flagship and a third of its ships with the ATACMS, stormshadows and its own native Neptune but most have retreated out of reach to the far side of the Black Sea.
If Ukaine had the Tomahawk cruise missile it could sink the entire fleet - gone from the Black Sea for the first time since it began in 1783
A major lever for negotiations with Russia from a position of strength.
Black Sea Fleet - just before the start of the Crimean war of 1853-6
Graphic: Ivan Aivazovsky. Black Sea Fleet in the Bay of Theodosia, Crimea, just before the Crimean War
Losing a third of the fleet is something Putin can hide from his people but losing all of it is not something he could hide. He’d be so humiliated his regime would likely be over. Putin would never risk that, so it is a powerful negotiating lever.
Trump understands that to negotiate you need leverage. The tomahawk cruise missile would be strong leverage for Ukraine in any negotiations. And if they are Ukraine’s missiles rather than US missiles it avoids any direct confrontation between world powers, after all the US sells this cruise missile to numerous countries.
The tomahawk cruise missile is just one of numerous military reasons why Russia would never invade any NATO country, even without any nuclear deterrent.
QUOTE STARTS
According to Zelensky, Ukraine requested the missiles on the condition that it would deploy them only if Russia refused to end its war and de-escalate.
"I said that this is a preventive method. I was told that it is an escalation," Zelensky said.
. Zelensky calls out White House over Tomahawk missiles leak — 'it was confidential'
So in short, there is no way that any NATO soldiers will engage in combat in Ukraine. But Zelensky very much wants to be supplied with the EQUIPMENT that a few brigades of NATO soldiers would bring with them to Ukraine.
Just send an equivalent amount of their equipment so he can equip more soldiers or better equip the soldiers he already has and that is far far better than sending the soldiers as his own soldiers speak Ukrainian and understand local conditions and the landscape and are fighting for their own country.
It also won’t involve NATO countries in the war. NATO countries like the UK are involved in numerous foreign wars. UK is involved in 6 new conflicts since the start of this century. But it’s different if they are fighting against Russia. Naturally they are reluctant to do that even though it would likely still not risk any attack by Russia on actually NATO territory. It would likely be like any other foreign war because Putin would NOT want to attack NATO.
But they don’t need to do that and both Ukraine AND its allies do not want this.
And this would need Zelensky’s permission.
General Bauer and others talk about preparing for war to protect peace AFTER the war is over - no conscripts will ever be needed from countries outside Ukraine
This is to fact check a speech by General Bauer but there are many stories like this run every few weeks during the war.
General Bauer has made several speeches like this. It is always about
preparing for war to protect peace.
It is also always about preparing for
AFTER the end of the Ukraine war.
There is NO WAY that Russia is in any fit state to invade anyone right now.
All you need to keep it out is border police right now, they can't afford to waste soldiers along the long border with NATO.
Remember it took OVER THREE MONTHS for Putin to find an extra 11,000 soldiers to send to Kursk oblast to try to push out the Ukrainians and this was ONLY by asking North Korea of all places to supply them. And he still can't liberate Sudzha city which Ukraine took in early August to protect their border with Sumy oblast in Ukraine.
He is desperately short of soldiers. But even a decade from now it's not likely he is able to get back to the level of strength of Rsusia before the invasion with its vast stockpiles of Soviet gear with a lot of it now gone or going.
And there is NO WAY Russia ever can seriously attack NATO so long as it stays strong.
See my:
[by lose quickly, Admiral Radakin means pushed right out of NATO territory, and any missile systems firing at NATO destroyed - NATO wouldn't try to defeat Russia as it is purely defensive]
See also:
BLOG: No possibility of conscription in UK - might expand civilian volunteer defence force but never through conscription - Russia is extraordinarily weak - Patrick Sanders wants to deter the remote risk of an attack if it recovers strength years later]
BLOG: No way that UK needs conscription to fight Russia - NATO has 3.5 million military (troops and civilians) and a new conscript takes six months training to be a basic soldier
US and UK will NEVER send soldiers to actually fight in Ukraine - but they are involved in may OTHER small wars and they are NOT global because all the fighting is confined to a small region
Ukraine is a soverign country and they can't send soldiers to fight on the front lines in Ukraine without Ukraine's permission
The US and UK are never going to send soldiers to Ukraine. But supposing some country did it does NOT turn it into a world war.
The US, UK, Russia, Iran and many other countries were all fighting ISIS in Syria in the Syrian war. This was NOT a global war because all the fighting was confined to Syria.
The UK, US and many countries fought against Iraq in the Kuwait war and then invaded Iraq in the Iraq war. Again although these wars involved countries from around the world, the fighting remained confined ot Kuwait in the Gulf war and Iraq in the Iraq war.
Similarly the Vietnam war was confined to Vietnam. The Falklands war was confined to the Falklands and so on.
The UK has been involved in 6 new military operations so far this century, none of them with countries that even have the remotest capability of attacking the UK.
, List of wars involving the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
So it is obvious there is NOT anything even remotely resembling a global conflict in Ukraine.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a mistake with no plan B - NOT crazy for him - as an ex KGB spy - he only does anything if he is so 100% sure he doesn’t even need a plan B
Much of this worry about a world war is based on an idea that Putin must be crazy because why otherwise would he start this very costly war in Ukraine?
However Putin invaded Ukraine because it is NOT NATO and because he thought he could win in Ukraine easily with almost no resistance like his invasion of Crimea in 2014.
Putin thought he would finish it in 10 days. I go into the details here:
Putin is still fighting because he didn't have a plan B for his supposedly clever plan worked out with his spies.
He worked on his carefully calculated plan for many months and he was so sure of it he didn’t even run it past his soldiers. Any general would have a Plan B but not Putin.
So - that helps you see why there is no real risk of Putin attacking NATO.
He knows very well Russia would lose such a war very quickly.
And here is where his mastery of propaganda comes in.
He knows he just made a mistake when he invaded Ukraine. But what is the propaganda value in saying he made a mistake? He presents himself to the RussIan people as a strong man who never makes a mistake.
So instead he exploits this mistake in propaganda to convey this FALSE image of himself as potentially crazy with all his bonkers bluffs.
Those bluffs also help him to seem strong to Russians because they see big powerful NATO intimidated by his bluffs.
He never carries through on them however because he knows if he did he’d lose and lose quickly.
People keep saying
"But he invaded Ukraine so he could do anything"
In reality that's not true. It is just a carefully cultivated image.
In reality Putin is the opposite. He is very slow to decide anything and he only acts when he thinks he has zero risk of failing
That is why he never has a plan B. Because if he thought he needed a plan B to cope with failure he wouldn’t do it in the first place.
Putin got his army to invade Ukraine kind of accidentally. Putin believed he could win in 10 days. Then he had no way to back out, and no plan B. The rest for the last 2 years have been improvising a plan B.
We see this throughout the war. He had no plan B when he lost the battle of Kyiv. He had no plan B, no reinforcements to rush to the scene when he lost the battle of Kharkiv oblast. Same also when he lost Kherson city.
When his Black Sea Fleet was forced out of Crimea he had no plan B.
When the Ukrainians surprised him on August 6th by crossing over the border from Sumy to Kursk oblast, again he had no plan B.
Any competent commander in chief fighting a war with over a million soldiers along the front line would keep at least a few tens of thousands in reserve to handle any unexpected breakthrough of the front lin.
But Putin keeps nobody back. Any soldiers he sends straight to the front line. It is the same philosophy of no plan B.
So when the Kursk incursion happened, with no plan B he just did nothing for two months. He let the Ukrainians take over the small strategic city of Sudhza for the lack of even 10,000 soldiers to send to stop them.
Finally after over 3 months he came up with a solution, to recruit 11,000 soldiers from North Korea - which leads ot major problems as they don’t even speak Russian. That is him improvising a plan B only 3 months later.
So - Putin’s bluffs are NOT a plan B for what to do if he loses.
He won’t have a plan B for losing and will certainly not use nukes or attack NATO.
This is all just propaganda to try to force Ukraine’s allies to stop helping Ukraine.
We don’t know Ukraine’s top secret Victory plan - but if Ukraine liberates large areas of Ukraine - Putin’s main pre-occupation will be how to present it as a win to Russians
We don’t know what Ukraine’s victory plan is. But if you hear of a major Ukrainian counteroffensive and Ukraine liberates a large area of Southern Ukraine - Putin very likely bluffs to try to stop it.
But he won’t do anything. He will be paralysed with indecision trying to work out a 100% risk free way of continuing.
If he can’t win and sees he is going to have to stop the invasion he will NOT be thinking in terms of revenge or retaliation.
He will be thinking
Who can I blame in the Kremlin?
How can I convince the Russian people that I have won this war when I have really lost it?
For the ordinary Russian even nearly 3 years into the war it is just a small “special operation”
Also, though the war is big for Ukraine, for Russia it is not much more than the "special operation" they claim it is. And Russia is reasonably enough self-contained that it isn't hugely affected by the sanctions etc. For the average Russian, their lives are not much changed except missing some Western things they used to have. The sanctions are designed to target the military and are not intended to try to undermine the Russian economy.
For Ukraine, the war uses over 22% of the Ukrainian GDP but only 3% of the Russian GDP which gives an idea of the relative importance for Russia and for Ukraine. In a way, it is
a war economy for Russia but
only Ukraine is on an all-out war economy level.
In terms of personnel it's
0.9% of the Russian population fighting - and mainly from ethnic minorities out of the 144 million Russians.
2.1% of the Ukrainian population fighting and this is of a smaller population and at all levels of society so it is more significant.
Also Ukraine is fighting for its own land and it has lost many civilian casualties while very few Russian civilians are affected.
Even that is nowhere near all out war levels. For the UK in WW2 it was around 12% of the population fighting.
So that gives some idea of why Russia can keep fighting when
most Russians aren't that interested in the war,
Putin can share the narrative at home with propaganda,
Putin doesn't seem to care much about the Russian reputation on the world stage or about trade with the rest of the world so long as it has a few partners it can trade with still.
Stories about bunkers are about deterrence for conventional attacks in some ex Soviet Union countries that have lots of bunkers like the ones Ukraine uses to protect itself in Ukraine
This is NOTHING to do with Biden's decision! This is them carrying out a plan they decided on in June. Note - being prepared for an attack is part of DETERRENCE.
The idea is that by showing to any potential adversary that you are strong you deter them from even thinking about attacking you8.
QUOTE The key points of the plan were agreed at a conference of senior officials in June, and a special group is now looking into it, the spokesman said.
. germany-starts-drawing-up-list-of-bunkers-amid-surging-tensions
That story goes on to talk about how Russia could build up to be able to challenge NATO by 2030.
This is a rather implausible scenario where after the Ukraine war ends Russia continues in a war economy focusing on building more missiles and weapons when there is no war to fight over rebuilding its economy. It would then be like North Korea a weak economy with much of its funding going into the military.
It's possible but even then it still would only be able to get back to the strength it had at the start of 2022, but without the vast stockpiles from the Soviet Union.
It wouldn't really be a serious adversary for NATO so long as NATO continued to modernize and stay ahead. Simply because modern weapons development is expensive and it doesn't have the GDP to compete.
And again - just as in 2022 and more so then the whole point is to continue to make sure Russia would NOT attack NATO in 2030.
It wouldn't really be a serious adversary for NATO so long as NATO continued to modernize and stay ahead. Simply because modern weapons development is expensive and it doesn't have the GDP to compete.
And again - just as in 2022 and more so then the whole point is to continue to make sure Russia would NOT attack NATO in 2030.
This is not about nukes. If they were worried about nukes they would tell everyone how to protect themselves from fallout and they aren't doing that.
And - the former Soviet Union countries like East Germany, Ukraine, Russia of course and many others already have vast numbers of these bunkers.
The Soviet Union built vast numbers of fallout shelters which Russia surely already has. In the Ukraine war the Ukrainians shelter from the Russian bombs in shelters from the Soviet Union built to withstand nuclear bombs. They are deep underground.
. Gimme Shelter: Ukrainians Make the Most of the Soviet Underground
But the German ones are meant for conventional attacks and they don't say who from. They are meant to protect from conventional explosions.
You do NOT need a bunker for protection from fallout - a movie trope only
As for fallout - despite the movies you do NOT need a bunker for protection from fallout. You do NOT need air filtration either. Fallout is heavy dust, it's not floating in the air. Dust light enough to float in the air wouldn't fall to the ground but would be spread far and wide and by the time it reaches the ground has lost most of its radioactivity.
Back in the cold war we all knew this. Amost nobody knows today. That fallout is heavy dust, easily visible, falls to the ground, dirt that you can brush off - and that as it hits the ground it is already getting far less radioactive, a tenth of its original radioactivity after a couple of hours, and most radioactivity is gone in 48 hours.
If the authorities thought there was a real risk of a nuclear war we would be told these things as we were in the cold war when I was a child.
There have been numerous nuclear tests, about once a month when I was a child, in remote places where they harmed nobody.
And bigger nukes are NOT more radioactive. Hydrogen bombs fuse hydrogen to helium with NO RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT FROM THE HYDROGEN. The only radioactivity is from the much smaller uranium trigger for the bomb.
The biggest nuke ever exploded, the Tsar Bomba was in a remote part of Russia, but it was an air burst and so didn't even leave a crater and nobody was hurt. Also it was designed to minimize radioactivity - the explosion was nearly all hydrogen fusing to helium, You could have visited the test site immediately after the explosion with almost no risk.
Most nukes do produce significant fallout - but only in the direction the wind blows. And if it is an airburst the radioactivity is almost all gone in 2 weeks.
So yes it IS possible to protect yourself from fallout. You do NOT need a nuclear bunker. Indeed unless you are in the direction of the prevailing winds you won’t even get any fallout. If you are you need to stay inside well away from any heavy dust that falls from the sky for at least 2 days and by then you can expect rescuers to be on the scene already telling you what to do.
They aren’t telling us these things - almost nobody knows them - so they can’t think there really is a significant risk. At least they can’t think there is enough of a risk that we need to know how to stay safe if there is a nuclear attack.
We would ALL KNOW THIS if there was a real risk of a nuclear war.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
You do NOT see these instructions on the news because there IS NO REAL WORLD WAR RISK
We were ALL sent this in the cold war.
NOBODY is sent it today.
Our governments do NOT assess ANY risk of a world war.
These instructions would save millions of lives in a nuclear war.
If you are outside the epicenter and stay away from the heavy dust that falls from the sky you don't get radiation sickness.
Radioactivity is mostly gone in 2 days, most of what's left in weeks.
When I was a child we all read this and knew what to do.
Now almost nobody knows except older people because we DON'T NEED TO KNOW.
Because there is NO LONGER ANY REAL RISK OF A NUCLEAR WAR.
It's bluffs, clickbait, sensationalism and exaggerations.
Graphic from: Protect and survive : this booklet tells you how to make your home and your family as safe as possible under nuclear attack
For more on this see:
Zelensky: “We are choosing NATO NOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS” - and he meant joining NATO AFTER THE WAR
This is another example of clickbait misreporting. Zelensky said Ukraine chooses NATO NOT nuclear weapons.
This was MISREPORTED in Western media as Zelensky telling Trump that Ukraine will either join NATO or get nuclear weapons.
You could hardly be further from the truth than that. Zelensky asked reporters not to spread this false message but sadly they continue to do so
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
NATO members are not at war.
In NATO countries, people are all alive, thank God!
And that is why we choose NATO and not nuclear weapons.
We are choosing NATO.
What Zelensky really said: “not nuclear weapons”
MISREPORTED as (NOT WHAT HE SAID) “I told Donald Trump that Ukraine will either have nuclear weapons or join NATO!”
You can see some of this misreporting by a google search of that sentence FALSELY attributed to Zelensky - maybe a mistranslation by someone?
See: “I told Donald Trump that Ukraine will either have nuclear weapons or join NATO!”
It was a hypothetical.
He said:
Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and then it will be a defense for us.
Or we should have some kind of alliance, and apart from NATO we do not know any functioning alliances today
…
NATO members are not at war.
In NATO countries, people are all alive, thank God!
And that is why we choose NATO and not nuclear weapons.
We are choosing NATO.
So they miss out the bit about “We are choosing NATO”
Here is a larger part of his speech so you can read it in context:
TRANSLATION:
So how can we believe in this document?
[The Budapest Memorandum where the nuclear states US, UK and Russia all agreed to supply whatever Ukraine needs to protect itself against an invasion if it gave up its nukes to Russia]
And how can we trust all the partners who guaranteed the protection of our territorial integrity and sovereignty?
The answer is very simple.
Does it work? No, this document does not work.
[Because Russia invaded Ukraine and the US and UK have not yet given Ukraine enough to prevent the invasion and of course Russia didn't even try as it was the invader]
So in general. All these agreements did not work out.
Which of these big countries, all the nuclear powers, were affected? All of them? No, only Ukraine.
Who gave away the nuclear weapons? All of them? No, only one. Who? Ukraine.
Who is at war today? Ukraine.
And so it turns out that in a conversation with Donald Trump, I told him it works out this way.
What is the solution?
Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and then it will be a defense for us.
Or we should have some kind of alliance, and apart from NATO we do not know any functioning alliances today.
The NATO countries are not at war today.
NATO members are not at war.
In NATO countries, people are all alive, thank God!
And that is why we choose NATO and not nuclear weapons.
We are choosing NATO.
END TRANSLATION
You can listen to it in Ukrainian with English titles by Dmitri (WAR TRANSLATED) here:
Ukraine joined the non-proliferation treaty in 1994 and kept to it with regular monitoring. The main change since early in the war is that
early in the war Ukraine wanted to sign treaty with security guarantees outside of NATO e.g. with UK and USA.
Now Zelensky says only joining NATO can keep them safe once the war is over
Zelensky was asked to clarify and he said again that Ukraine does NOT want nukes emphasizing: “We don’t do nuclear weapons”
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Q. Mr President you just made it clear at the EU Summit that the question of nuclear weapons would arise for Ukraine if it cannot become a NATO member.
So in this context can you tell us how long it would take for Ukraine to build a nuclear bomb?
And a question to the Secretary General would you understand [that] Ukraine [can] build a nuclear Bomb if it cannot become a NATO member
A. Sometimes we create problems for ourselves and now you are beginning to do that.
We never said that we are preparing to create a nuclear weapon.
I said that when Budapest memorandum was signed by very honorable very powerful nuclear countries it said that Ukraine gives nuclear weapons [back to Russia] and Ukraine will have promises from these very respectable countries including Russia China United States that we will have our secure territorial integrity and sovereignty.
...
After that Putin began this occupation [of Ukraine] not once but ... two times during the last 10 years.
This means that it's not a very good umbrella for our security.
That's why I said I don't have an alternative except NATO.
That was my signal.
But we don't do nuclear weapons. Please don't spread these messages.
[rewritten slightly for fluency]
NATO Secretary General: And Ukraine will be in NATO and until that happens we will make sure that Ukraine has everything it needs to prevail .
See video here
Ukraine joined the non-proliferation treaty in 1994 dismantling the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the US and Russia.
A successor of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine acceded to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state in December 1994. This meant not only relinquishing the right to develop nuclear weapons in the future, but also physically dismantling and removing the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal that Ukraine had inherited from the Soviet Union: 1,240 nuclear warheads arming 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) including their extensive launch control infrastructure, 700 nuclear cruise missiles arming 44 strategic bombers, and nearly 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons, including artillery shells, gravity bombs, and mines.
. Ukraine and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
It keeps to it with regular monitoring.
QUOTE STARTS
By 1996, Ukraine transferred all Soviet-era strategic warheads to Russia.
Ukraine received extensive assistance to dismantle ICBMs, ICBM silos, heavy bombers, and cruise missiles from the U.S. funded Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. ICBM silos were destroyed by 2002, ICBMs were dismantled or transferred to Russia, and heavy bombers were eliminated by 2001.
Former President Yanukovych announced at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit that Ukraine would remove all of its HEU by 2012. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed in March 2012 that all of the HEU had been transferred to Russia.
…. Ukraine remains committed to the NPT regime.
The main shift in their position is that early in the war Ukraine wanted security guarantees outside of NATO e.g. with UK and USA.
Now Zelensky says only joining NATO can keep them safe once the war is over. As he explained, it wants something stronger than security guarantees. It wants to be part of NATO.
From its side, NATO has already committed to Ukraine joining NATO.
QUOTE STARTS
4. Will Ukraine join NATO?
Yes. NATO member states (called ‘NATO Allies’) agreed at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, noting that its next step would be to submit an application to the Membership Action Plan (MAP), a NATO programme covering political, economic, defence, resource, security and legal reforms of aspirant countries. At the 2023 Vilnius Summit, Allies removed the requirement for Ukraine to pursue a MAP, which will change Ukraine’s membership path from a two-step process to a one-step process. At the 2024 Washington Summit, Allies stated that they will continue to support Ukraine on its irreversible path to NATO membership, reaffirming that they will be in a position to extend an invitation for Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.
Zelensky in the Sky News interview did NOT suggest only part of Ukraine joins NATO - only a hypothetical temporary arrangement like West Germany - and NOT his own plan which will be worked out with Trump
This is a much misunderstood interview on Sky News.
It is Zelensky's answer to people who propose a ceasefire without adequate security arrangements, clearly NOT his own Victory plan.
Ukraine has to join NATO in whole not part.
Temporary area under NATO protection to end hot phase.
Does NOT say he'd cede any land to Russia during negotiation.
Does NOT say how he'd get the rest of the land back but presumably by leverage over Russia in some way.
Never says he'd cede any land to Russia
It's rather similar to when West Germany joined NATO
But once again it's NOT his Victory plan and I think it is more like brainstorming and to help people understand the context for his own plan.
it is totally hypothetical. Ukraine needs to be offered this by other countries and nobody is suggesting it. It is NOT his victory plan.
He said that many countries have suggested a ceasefire but so far none have suggested any way to do it that would be safe for Ukraine.
Ukraine will NOT join NATO until after the war is over. The idea here is a ceasefire where part of Ukraine gets NATO protection without becoming fully a member of NATO. So a kind of interim stage half in half out. There is precedent for this. West Germany had disputed territories when it joined NATO.
But it would be pretty tricky to do this with Ukraine. Because - what if fighting starts up again? How do they handle that?
I think this is more Zelensky drawing out the issues with a ceasefire so that people can see it is not very realistic.
He does have a solution, his Victory plan. He is open to other ideas but a ceasefire has lots of problems if you try to work it through.
He says the only SAFE way to do it, which NOBODY HAS YET OFFICIALLY SUGGESTED is
some temporary arrangement is made that lets the part of Ukraine already controlled by Ukraine have the full protection of NATO after the ceasefire.
this stops the hot stage of the war.
Ukraine does NOT recognise he occupied territories as Russian.
Ukraine has to apply to join NATO as a whole not only in part.
Then they negotiate over the rest later
In those negotiations he does NOT say that he would negotiate them away it's the other way around he would negotiate to make them part of Ukraine too.
But this is ALL HYPOTHETICAL. It is his answer to people who suggest a ceasefire.
He says Okay you offer a ceasefire but how would that work? He says without an arrangement like this, any ceasefire would be very dangerous for Ukraine.
Also, this is NOT his victory plan. His victory plan has top secret elements which he has not shared publicly.
He is saying, okay you offer a ceasefire but how would that work? When Ukraine can't trust Putin and Ukraine can't trust anyone to give security guarantees except NATO because it had strong security guarantees
already from the UK, Russia itself, the USA, and weaker ones from France and China to prevent any country invading them.
Only 20 years later in 2014 all those guarantees completely failed to stop Russia invading Crimea. And again in 2022. While they look at Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania not one fighter jet or tank between them - and they are safe because they are part of NATO.
So NATO seems to be the only game in town here. So a ceasefire is only safe if it somehow is guaranteed by NATO.
That is what he says. Once again this is NOT his victory plan. It is also NOT what he will propose to Trump when they negotiate. It is just his answer to people asking for Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire.
TRANSCRIPTION
[Translation from Ukrainian, starting from 22:04]
No-one has offered us to be in NATO with just one part or another part of Ukraine. That is for one fact.
The fact [proposal?] is that it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war because we can just give the NATO membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control.
Yes it could be possible but no-one offered.
The invitation to join NATO must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border.
You can't give the invitation to just one part of a country. Why? Because thus you would recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other is Russia.
So legally by law we have no right by law to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia.
And here we must not make any mistake. But if we want to stop the hot stage of the war we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. Then Ukraine can take back the other part of its territor diplomatically.
This proposal has never been considered by Ukraine because no-one has ever offered that to us officially.
We can't by law recognize Ukrainian territory under the occupation of Russia as Russian. That is impossible. That is against the constitution of Ukraine.
A lot of different countries proposed a ceasefire to us. The question is, a ceasefire where.
The second point is if we fix a ceasefire [how do we have] guarantees that Putin will not come back.
Yes immediately the part of Ukraine [covered by the ceasefire needs to be in NATO] otherwise how can we go to a ceasefire? So for us it's very dangerous.
The reason it is so dangerous for Ukraine is the risk that Russia would use the ceasefire to fortify its borders with Ukraine, re-arm, build lots of missiles, rebuild its army - and then break the ceasefire agreement with a surprise attack like its first surprise attack on Ukraine to take more of Ukraine.
They already did this twice, in 2014 and in 2022 and so could do it again.
Zelensky seems to be talking about the “West German” model for NATO membership.
Here is a summary of it
Quote from Stoltenberg: "When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border."
The Financial Times noted that discussions about a "West German model" for Ukraine have been going on in expert circles for over a year and a half. Dan Fried, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, and Kurt Volker, former US Ambassador to NATO and Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine, are among those who have argued for it.
In an interview with a Czech media outlet, Czech President Petr Pavel said he did not believe Ukraine's regaining of control over all the territories within its internationally recognised borders was a prerequisite for seriously considering its NATO accession.
"If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat [that] as temporary and accept Ukraine into NATO in the territory it will control at that time," he said.
…
Sarotte believes that Ukraine's "partial" accession to NATO, following the West German model, is a feasible scenario for a conditional victory. This arrangement would grant Ukraine protection, freedom, and a chance to develop while keeping Russia isolated. This outcome is preferable to waiting for Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin to abandon his ambitions regarding Ukraine or for Russia to achieve further military successes.
Some analysts caution against seriously considering the West German model for Ukraine, arguing that, unlike in the past when the borders were recognised by both parties, the current situation in Ukraine sees daily shifts in the front line. Both Ukraine and Russia still want to change the status quo, and some of the more cautious NATO members may still be reluctant to extend Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine.
West German model for Ukraine's NATO membership is discussed in West – FT
There are some issues with this though. Timothy Ash raises some issues here:
Germany was divided along clear lines agreed by the victorious second world war allies. Anglo-American forces actually withdrew to those lines from territory they had initially occupied in 1945. There are no agreed lines in Ukraine.
From the start, there were large numbers of western boots on the ground in West Germany. In Ukraine, there are currently no acknowledged western boots on the ground (although quite a few sneakers).
East Germany was heavily Sovietized but still a separate state. It remained, as I can testify from personal experience, very German. The Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, by contrast, are being brutally Russified. Putin claims them as new provinces of the Russian Federation. The probability of a future Russian leader returning these territories to Ukraine through a peaceful negotiation, as Mikhail Gorbachev did East Germany to the west, is not high.
. OPINION: Only NATO Can Secure a ‘West German’ Future for Ukraine
But Zelensky also makes very clear in this interview that he is NOT talking about any proposal of his own.
He says that he needs to talk to Trump first after he is inaugurated and until then there won’t be a real plan.
He needs to work directly with Trump because if others around him are involved it will destroy communication with Trump.
He can’t do that until Trump; is inaugurated but he has shared information with Trump and he is thinking over it.
So he will work out the plan with Trump in a series of meetings after Trump is inaugurated.
TRANSCRIPT
[starting from 12:30]
Zelensky: With Trump I want to work with him directly because there are different voices from people around him and that's why we not to [have] anybody around to destroy our communication, it will be not helpful and will be destructive and we have to
we have to try to find the new mode
… I want to share with him ideas and I want to hear from him from him his ideas
Have you spoken to him yet?
Zelensky: … in September when I was in New York we had conversation it was very warm good, constructive but it was mostly not with small details but with Putin you can't be without details. …
It was very good me meeting and it was an important first step.
Now we have to prepare some meetings I don't know how many we will have but until we will have the real plan where Ukraine is strong.
…
Q. But is there a basic plan of what you think Mr President Trump
Zelensky: We don't know the details from our plan or future plan of … President Trump
I said to him some things which I think we have to understand
who is Putin
what he really wants
We have to be very strong
Then of course we have our our peace plan mhm and it was based on peace formula and the lot of things it been done by the way 100% all the meetings with dozens of countries we finished in November as I said that the plan will be ready
So the plan is ready that's very important how's it been received
… we finished with the plan after [my meeting with him
… I think he's thinking about a lot of things our team shared some things with his team
… I've got details from the American intelligence
He doesn't have all the rights until he's not in white house so I think he's learning the situation now.
It's good that he's learning
… I think that we need to prepare for some meetings before we will find some common understanding of the situation
Ukraine does NOT want its Soviet era nukes back! Bizarre suggestion of unnamed officials that makes no sense
Then to add to this, a recent New York Times op ed suggested that some unnamed US officials have suggested giving nukes to Ukraine AFTER THE WAR ENDS.
But whoever those officials were, they must have been at a low level in the administration and remarkably misinformed as what they suggested is bizarre and impossible.
Here is a fact check by the Kyiv Post:
What exactly did the officials say?
A New York Times article published on Thursday, Nov. 21, titled “Trump’s Vow to End the War Could Leave Ukraine With Few Options,” discussed Western options to help Kyiv defend itself ahead of Donald Trump’s return to office.
In one paragraph, the publication said unnamed officials “suggested” that US President Joe Biden could return the nukes Ukraine relinquished in the 1990s under the Budapest Memorandum. Here’s the full paragraph:
“Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.”
As such, it was merely a suggestion made by unnamed officials, not Biden himself. Moreover, Washington does not possess the nukes Ukraine gave up in the 1990s, which would render the option impossible.
. FACT-CHECK: Is Biden Returning Nuclear Weapons to Ukraine?
Then to add to that as we just saw Zelensky most emphatically does NOT WANT NUKES. The Ukrainian people wouldn’t want them either for the obvious reason.
It would also be a blatant violation of the non proliferation treaty. It is an ABSURD suggestion.
Ukraine when it joins NATO will automatically join the NATO nuclear umbrella
Even then, it is highly unlikely that NATO wants to position them so close to Russia.
And next to impossible that Ukraine wants to host them on its soil.
Russia’s Sarmat ICBM is just a replacement for the Ukrainian made Voevoda ICBM with shelf-life through to 2023 - but it keeps blowing up
Deploying does NOT mean any plans to use them. All their older ICBMs are ALREADY deployed. And -the main reason that Russia wants to develop a new nuke now is because it depended on Ukraine to service its older generation ICBMs.
it is a replacement for the Ukrainian built Voevoda ICBM which is only guaranteed to work through to 2023
naturally enough Ukraine is not going to help Russia maintain or build ICBMs any more.
It seems Russia finds it hard to build a new ICBM by itself as they keep exploding, with only one successful launch so far, a problem they need to solve.
Having lots of warheads on one ICBM makes it less rather than more flexible.
Ukraine built them when it was part of the Soviet Union and still has the expertise and the components and maintenance contract to maintain them. Ukraine had a contract to extend the shelf life of the Voevoda ICBM up to 2014, but broke off that contract when Russia invaded Crimean in 2014, leaving Russia without anyone with the skills to service its older model ICBMs. In 2018 the Russians launched a Voevoda ICBM and confirmed it had a shelf life of another 5 years which takes you to 2023. But they don't know how to service it.
So they build a new ICBM, the SARMAT is the replacement. But it keeps blowing up on the launch pad, and has only had one successful test so far.
ALL ICBMs have multiple warhead capability. The SARMAT has more warheads than most - but the US hasn't built one like this because it doesn't see the point. They have the same number of total warheads on all their ICBMs but putting them on fewer ICBMs like Russia is doing gives less flexibility.
Russia will need to solve this problem of exploding Sarmats some time soon. It's ICBMs likely can last a few more years but are not guaranteed to continue to work beyond 2023.
For details see:
Putin can’t win a war with nukes - the opposite - all-out war would end with his people rising against him and NATO taking over Russian skies
That map shows what happens if Russia fires ALL its nukes at the USA.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
No way Russia does this.
If Russia launched ALL its nukes it could make the areas on orange radioactive for a couple fo days, some lingering for weeks, worst over in hours.
Focus of largest humanitarian operation ever
Anyone indoors will be much safer and can leave their house after 2 days.
There is no fallout outside the orange areas - fallout is just heavy dust.
It’s impossible for Russia to win a war by using nukes like this.
The areas outside the fallout plumes don't get any radioactivity.
The areas within them lose most of the radioactivity in 2 days and most of what's left in 2 weeks.
So, a nuclear war would have only a small effect on the world population. Even if all of Russia's nukes were impossibly dropped on the USA then that would reduce the population by less than 190 million out of 7.8 billion or less than 2.5%. If the USA response was similar it would still be less than 5%. And it would NOT make the world uninhabitable.
And meanwhile, NATO would continue to be far far superior to whatever Russia has even if Russia impossibly did a sudden unexpected first strike with all its nukes.
Russia doesn’t even have one nuke for every US and UK airbase never mind the destroyers, fighter jets, bombers etc.
This can also help people to be less scared of nukes. For some reason many seem to think that Putin would want to live out his life in a bunker with the rest of the world nearly all dead including most Russians - and would prefer that to having to give up on adding Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
It doesn't make sense, no sane person would do that. Also from what we’ve seen here, it doesn't match his character AT ALL as someone who is averse to taking any risks.
But anyway - it is based on a movie fantasy. In reality even if he launched a full-scale nuclear war, then 95% of the world population remains including most of Russia and of NATO and including NATO's military capabilities.
In reality we also now know that NATO would respond with conventional and unconventional non-nuclear methods to more rationally stop Putin launching more nukes.
If Putin used nukes against NATO, he has nothing like enough nukes to stop NATO from fighting back. Never had in the Cold War either when NATO and the Soviet Union were near equals in technology. But Russia is a much weaker economy than the Soviet Union and it also has the problems of corruption siphoning a fair bit of its defence funding away into the pockets of Putin’s oligarch friends.
We found from the Ukraine war to most people’s surprise that NATO’s technology from the 1980s is still vastly superior to what Russia has. If Russia had anything like NATO’s capability it wouldn’t be stuck moving one mile a week in Eastern Donbas but would have got control of the entire Ukrainian air space on day 1 of the war.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Geneva Protocol II from 1977
Must NOT target
- civilian populations
- civilian objects
- cultural objects
Ratified by all NATO countries except USA
USA in practice complies without ratifying.
US had Soviet cities as targets in 1956
- long before Geneva Protocol II
Never any possibility of toal destruction just of large numbers of casualties
- nukes can't destroy a country
- neither NATO nor the Soviet Union ever had anything like enough nukes to destroy the other side to the extent they can't fight.
This is IMPORTANT as it means PUTIN CAN'T DEFEAT NATO WITH NUKES No country ever had first strike capability.
The conventional NATO military would remain and be far superior to Russia after any exchange of nukes.
Putin would LOSE if he used nukes.
Nukes ONLY WORK AS A DETERRENT to prevent another country invading by threatening to use nukes if they do.
Under Trump and Biden, the US no longer will respond to nukes with nukes.
It more sensibly responds by using sleeper agents, conventional weapons, hacking, special ops etc to stop Russia firing more nukes.
USA and Russia do NOT have a M.A.D. doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction)
Likely NEVER had such a doctrine though te 1950s doctrine had some similarities.
Today the USA would more rationally act to prevent Putin launching more nukes and Russia would LOSE, he couldn't stop NATO taking over Russian airspace.
So, whatever happened, NATO would survive and would be still vastly superiro in conventional terms to Russia.
Ordinary Russians as well as Putin's colleagues would no longer see him
as a strong man to protect Russia after such catastrophic misjudgement.
The main question would be whether he would be assassinated or spend the rest of his life in prison.
For details see
SECTION: Not in the world of M.A.D (Mutual Assured Destruction)
in:
That can help people see he is never going to do this.
Putin is rubbish at war - master of propaganda
He is rubbish at fighting wars but he is a master at propaganda.
When he is so good at influencing Western media - think how easy it will be for him to persuade Russians that losing this war is a win, with total control of the Russian media.
Putin is very careful, risk averse. He is rather OCD or paranoid (not intended as as diagnosis). He is NOT a military man. He is an ex KGB spy. He only acts when he believes he has 100% certainty, such high levels of certainty he doesn’t even bother to have a plan B.
Putin is NOT pushed into a corner by this war - just trying his best to push Ukraine into a corner
What happened is that Putin decided to add Ukraine to the very large Russian Federation.
But Ukaine didn't want to be added. That is what this war is about. If Russia wins, Ukraine loses its sovereignty and becomes part of Russia. If Ukraine wins then Russia just fails in its attempt to expand to include Ukraine. It's very different.
That is not being backed into a corner.
Putin never even promised his people that Ukraine would be part of Russia. He is very careful with his language he said that the aim is to denazify Ukraine.
Now he did annex the four oblasts of Luhansk, Donets, Zaporizhzhia and Kheson. Before that he altered the Russian Constitution to say that annexing is irreversible.
Assuming the final settlement is anything short of Russia holding onto the entirety of those four oblasts - Russia will have to change its constitution to permit de-annexing.
But that's easy enough for Putin to reverse.
Putin has already lost many times in this war - but convinces everyone FALSELY that he always wins in Ukraine and that the world is a safer place if he continues to win
He is a master propogandist. When he lost the city of Kherson and when he lost the Battle of Kyiv in 2022 he still managed to maintain his image in Russia as a strong man that never loses. Even in the West few seem to even remember those wins by Ukraine in 2022 or put much importance on them.
Putin is able to convince his people and even much of the world that he is still winning even as he loses.
Remember that just through words, Putin has managed somehow to convince most of the Western world that
US and UK soldiers fire the ATACMS and stormshadow.
That is just such a bizarre thing for anyone to believe - that the US provides missiles to other countries that only they can fire. Or the UK.
But somehow Putin has made this so convincing sounding that people who are often very intelligent - don't even examine this assumption until I draw their attention to it.
He has somehow conveyed this idea that he is mad and that he can't lose because if he loses something dire would happen.
He has managed to convince many that the world will be a safer place if Russia wins in Ukraine - that they have to persuade their leaders to let Putin win to prevent a world war.
That is an extraordinary thing to persuade people to believe if you stop and think about it.
This is all PROPAGANDA.
It is not real.
He manages to make his bluffs about nukes seem FALSELY - MORE convincing even with NO PREPARATION TO USE NUKES and bluffing ABOUT ONCE A MONTH
He bluffed about a nuclear war on average about once a month for over 2 years. Anyone else could only do that bluff once or twice or a few times with diminishing credibility.
But Putin seems to make it more and more convincing to our people each time he does it. Mainly through words.
No actual preparation to use nuke AT ALL. Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokesperson says they see NO PREPARATION TO USE NUKES and they have not raised their own response level
Singh says it is just the rhetoric we've seen before.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Is the Pentagon concerned about nukes or changed alert level?
A. We see NO signs of Putin preparing to use nukes and have NOT CHANGED OUR ALERT LEVEL.
Has world war III began?
No. This is just the US as one of 50 or so countries supporting Ukraine’s defence capabilities.
[my short summary for autistic or panicking readers]
Graphic shows title section for “No signs Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Pentagon says” (story in the Kyiv Independent) and transcript of Pentagon press briefing saying the same thing.
See my:
A completely predictable pattern. Yet people fall for the bluff over and over.
When he loses his preoccupation will just be - how to present it as a “win” to his people
So what will he do when he loses?
Well, in Russia he has complete control of the State Media. So he can convince them far more easily than he can convince us - of just about anything.
He can easily convince the Russian people that black is white - that Russia losing in Ukraine is actually a successful "special operation" to denazify Ukraine.
So I wouldn't worry about Putin.
It's not the job of Ukraine or its allies to ensure tha Putin doesn't lose this war.
Indeed that's more of his propaganda. He has managed somehow to convince the general public amongst Ukraine's allies that Putin must not lose this war.
He manages to convince us that somehow we are safer in a world where Putin gets to keep part of Ukriane after an illegal invasion.
He certainly has the "Gift of the Gab" as they put it.
QUOTE the ability to speak easily and confidently in a way that makes people want to listen to you and believe you:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gift-of-the-gab
But that is all it is. He can make you believe things that are false. It is not true.
And for some reason the Western media don't fact check him.
But that is his "out" here.
If he is losing he won't think
"Shall I out of complete madness attack NATO".
He will be thinking
"What can I do that is 100% guaranteed to persuade the Russian people that this is a win and that I am still a strong president protecting them".
Never any risk of a world war - and our leaders know this or they would say what to do
This is nothing new, it was similar with the F-16s, with the ATACMS when first delivered to Ukraine in fall 2023, the air defences in the fall of 2022, HiMARS in spring 2022, the Challenger tanks from the UK in spring 2023, and many more.
There is NEVER any real risk of a world war.
There WAS a real risk in my childhood during the cold war. But not today. You can tell that partly just by the way that governments are NOT advising citizens how to stay as safe as possible in a nuclear war as they did when I was a child.
Ask anyone in their 70s or older and they can likely still remember some of the instructions for how to be as safe as possible if nukes fall. We all knew it back then. But today's young people don't know this because they don't need to.
That is how safe it is today.
I have this article I'm working on and this may be a good time to finish it to help people consolidate their understanding that we do not risk a world war.
It may be useful already
Ukraine wants to join NATO after the war is over because it sees that even the weakest of countries are safe once they join NATO
Eventually, AFTER THE WAR IS OVER, Ukraine does want to join NATO and it would then be under NATO's nuclear umbrella.
This is because Ukraine sees that Russia attacked them, when they
already had dozens of tanks and fighter jets
a security assurance from both the USA and UK at the time of the invasion
peace promises from Russia
security assurance even from Russia under the Budapest memorandum.
Meanwhile,
tiny Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania don't have a single fighter jet or tank between them
but are all part of NATO.
That is the obvious reason why Ukraine wants to join NATO. They see that it is the only method out there that has
a proven success record in preventing invasion by Russia.
So they want to JOIN NATO AFTER THE WAR IS OVER and once they do that they will be safe and Russia can NEVER do this again.
SEE ALSO
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I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.rough Ukraine and will do so no matter what its allies do to support Ukraine.
What about the articles saying that Russia is preparing "retaliatory" measures since Ukraine used US ATACMs again?
Thank you for you detailed writings. However, what do you think of Rob Bauer saying that he urges Western business' to prepare for "wartime scenario"
https://www.reuters.com/world/top-nato-official-calls-business-leaders-prepare-wartime-scenario-2024-11-25/
Also, this TikTok account and many like it have been popping up recently, sharing clips like of General Sir Roland Walker saying if UK was asked, it would be in battlefields to help, sparking fear of WW3. Account can propably taken as one of many other fearmongerers, but what do you think of general's statements?
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGd2AA38P/
https://www.tiktok.com/@truthnews_?_t=8rg9hd2G9nU&_r=1