Russia activates nukes

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/27/russia-putin-nuclea…

Well, I don’t think many people had nuclear holocaust on their list of black swans for the year.

This is the highest stakes game of nuclear chicken in history.

Our neighbor is Ukrainian. Her mother and sister are trapped in Ukrain. Her aunt and cousin are in Russia.

She is talking to all of them every day. Her mother and sister are hiding in a bomb shelter hearing mortars explode outside. They are terrified.

She says her aunt and cousin are brainwashed. They tell her there is no reason to worry, that the Russians are in Ukrain to help and are not going to hurt the civilians.

She also wants the world to know that Putin is a modern hitler. That the world needs to stop him now because he won’t stop without the world forcing him to stop.

In short, anyone who thinks it ends with Ukrain is a fool.

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If Putin launches any nukes you can assume at some future date he was hell bent on using them.

Just giving into this or any threat or bluff means we more assuredly face the nuclear threat again later.

Putin is correct he is fighting for his life. But aiming the nukes at us wont help him. He needs to purge the oligarchs to survive.

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anyone who thinks it ends with Ukraine is a fool.

Yes he’s just done a Pearl Harbour.

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Putin playing the nuke card this soon tells me that things are not going well for him. The sanctions must really be hurting.

Steve

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Putin playing the nuke card this soon tells me that things are not going well for him. The sanctions must really be hurting.

And the war on the ground.

One good thing about the ‘nuke card’ is that more level headed Russians might take Putin out. The ‘nuke card’ is MADness!

The Captain

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The sanctions must really be hurting.

It’s been a couple days. It hasn’t affected him at all. It hasn’t affected his country at all. I can’t speculate why he would activate his nuclear capability, but you can be sure that as he does that, we do that as well, and he knows it. Perhaps he doesn’t care, and perhaps he’s just a fool.

I hope that there are back channel conversations going on, as we saw happened recently between generals of sounder mind to forestall any actual use of such weaponry. I can about guarantee that if something on this scale would happen it would be the biggest market shock in history, not to mention the genocidal and moral aspects of it.

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In short, anyone who thinks it ends with Ukrain is a fool.

OK then I must be a fool because I don’t think Putin is going to attack a NATO country ever. In 2008, 2014 and now he only dared attack Georgia and Ukraine.
It is time to imitate Kennedy and stare down Putin. I don’t believe he is suicidal.

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I don’t think Putin is going to attack a NATO country ever.

At this point most of the world will never trust that.

He aims to build. He has gone mad.

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Putin playing the nuke card this soon tells me that things are not going well for him.

I think he was trying to bully the Europeans out of the conflict. If the Ukrainians don’t receive any help, they can only fight for so long.

Fortunately, the EU called his bluff.

Ukraine supplied with modern weaponry from the EU, combined with their heroic determination might be able to hold out for a long time. The longer it drags on, the worse it is for Russia and Putin.

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I don’t believe he is suicidal.

No, but he might be detached from reality and obsessed with his own power. He is a bit like Hitler in that he considers the fall of the Soviet Union a humiliation (like Hitler thought the German surrender in WWI was a humiliation.) Putin’s motivation has been to rebuild the Soviet Empire.

It is time to imitate Kennedy and stare down Putin.

Absolutely, and it appears that is what the Europeans are doing. They have seen this movie before. They know it doesn’t stop with Ukraine.

OK then I must be a fool because I don’t think Putin is going to attack a NATO country ever. In 2008, 2014 and now he only dared attack Georgia and Ukraine.

It depends. If the EU would have backed down to Russia’s nuclear threats in the last week Putin would have definitely been emboldened, and maybe not now, but maybe in a few years he would have tried to roll over the Baltic states. Maybe he could have waited for a fawning American President saying things like “why should we start a war over these three little countries?” Or, an American President who wanted to pull out of NATO completely.

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I think he was trying to bully the Europeans out of the conflict. If the Ukrainians don’t receive any help, they can only fight for so long.

Putin has a problem using nukes in the first place. The US, UK and France can strike back. Meaning even a surgical usage can destroy his life because he can not isolate the strike visa vie any of the western nuclear powers.

I don’t believe he is suicidal.

No he is not sitting in a corner in pain over a suicidal ideology.

But his actions have an actuality. He is the walking dead. His life is on borrowed time.

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It’s been a couple days. It hasn’t affected him at all. It hasn’t affected his country at all. I can’t speculate why he would activate his nuclear capability, but you can be sure that as he does that, we do that as well, and he knows it. Perhaps he doesn’t care, and perhaps he’s just a fool.

I hope that there are back channel conversations going on, as we saw happened recently between generals of sounder mind to forestall any actual use of such weaponry. I can about guarantee that if something on this scale would happen it would be the biggest market shock in history, not to mention the genocidal and moral aspects of it.

I don’t know what Putin is thinking, but we can make some observations. One is that the war isn’t going the way it was supposed to. Two Russian armored columns penetrated Kharkiv on Sunday, and both were smoking ruins by noon. I don’t know what went wrong, but there clearly needed to be more than two columns. An advance on Irpin outside of Kyiv also ende with burning vehicles and Russian weapons and ammunition being inventoried by their new owner, the Ukrainian army. That seems to be an anecdote for the whole war thus far. Despite an overwhelming numerical advantage, Russia has failed to capture any major objectives. Putin seems to have underestimated the Ukrainians’ resolve.

Putin also seems to have underestimated the world’s resolve. Europeans are turning out in marches numbering hundreds of thousands to protest. Their leaders are listening. Aid is pouring in from all sides, including just today the promise of fighter jets from the EU. The Germans are sending offensive weapons for the first time since WWII. The Czechs just sent a train laden with one million bullets with more on the way. It was a bit slow to start, but there seems to be a real resolve to stop Putin in Ukraine before he goes farther.

In the US, a wing of the chattering class has long been enamored with Putin. Putin wrestles with bears and drills for oil, they say, what’s not to like? In the days and weeks leading up the war, a prominent pundit whose names rhymes with “Pucker” and his network colleagues lavished praise on Putin. He’s just misunderstood. Putin never harmed us. And talk of an invasion is just a fabrication designed to distract us from inflation.

Now we know the invasion isn’t a fabrication like they told us, that wing of the chattering class is backing off their prior support of Putin. At a big political conference in Florida last week his his formerly unwavering allies in the United States started wavering. They still like Putin, just not as much as they did.

The ruble fell by 30% and the Russian stock market didn’t open today. Russian debt is now rated as junk. Thousands have taken to the streets in Russian cities and despite thousands of arrests, the protesters keep returning. Putin is in trouble and he knows it. Hopefully, saner heads will prevail.

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. . . and now he only dared attack Georgia and Ukraine.

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AHEM!

You omitted his “absorption” of the Crimea!!

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=put…

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You omitted his “absorption” of the Crimea!!

Crimea === Ukraine.

The Captain