The World to Russia: Bleep You

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The unfolding war is unlike any other, I believe. Russia is being pummeled by financial sanctions. Ukraine citizen militias are organizing on social media, and a head of state is addressing his people and the world on Twitter. There are some good ones on this Twitter feed. Fighters on the front lines are providing updates on Twitter.

Oh, and this seems significant —

So is this:

The Russian people won’t have to take their sons and possibly daughters back in body bags, I guess. Many families may never learn what happened to their loved ones.

Okay, one more.

I understand that Russians have very limited access to the Web outside of Russia, but “very limited” is not “zero.” Russians are going to find out what’s really going on eventually. And it sounds as if a lot of them have found out already — see Furious Russians turn on Putin – mass arrests as thousands protest in St Petersburg, just posted at The Express (UK).

This morning we woke to the news that Russia was putting its nuclear forces on alert. Nuclear weapons are a power that creates weakness and limits options. It’s because of nuclear weapons that other nations are not sending their own troops to defend Ukraine, but instead the world stands by and watches. Ukraine will be sacrified before risking a nuclear World War. But the world is not standing by helplessly; the sanctions appear to be having an effect.

Today the Pentagon said, in so many words, that since the original blitzkrieg plan was stopped, the Russian military appears to be falling back on the time-honored Plan B — a seige. This is not good news for civilians. Will the Russians interpret attempts to send food and medical supplies to Ukraine’s cities as acts of war?

Now Alexander Vindman is tweeting that there are reports Putin has fired the head of the Russian military, Valery Gerasimov. This hasn’t hit the news yet, if it’s true. It may not be.

If Putin is rational — some are questioning this — he must realize that even if his military does take Ukraine, this will not be the end of the story. The global community will not accept a Russian occupation Ukraine, never mind Ukrainians. There will be robust subversion and guerrilla war. It will cost Russia big time to hang on to Ukraine. And the sanctions continue to pile on.

See the Finantial Times, Vladimir Putin’s grand plan is unravelling.

Unable to achieve the easy victory that he anticipated, Putin seems unlikely to back down. Pride, paranoia and his own personal survival point to the use of ever more radical and dangerous tactics. One senior western official predicted to me that “Putin will only dig in and this will get very ugly”.

Western security analysts have been warning of the possible use of thermobaric missiles in Ukraine — “flame-thrower” bombs which Russia has deployed in Chechnya and Syria and can cause huge loss of life. The nuclear threats that Putin is deploying, while clearly intended to intimidate, cannot be entirely discounted given his state of mind.

Do read the entire article; it’s very informative. But it’s possible the rest of the world will be drawn into a larger war, like it or not. However, I believe Russia will be alone. I don’t think Xi Jinping is deluded enough to back up Russia militarily. What’s in it for China? Nothing I can see.

Best-case would be for the oligarchs gang up on Putin and oust him.

One more tweet — Kyiv’s defenders are sending videos to the Russian troops surrounding their city.

Ukrainians attend a rally in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022, during a protest against the potential escalation of the tension between Russia and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden are to hold a high-stakes telephone call on Saturday as tensions over a possibility imminent invasion of Ukraine escalated sharply and the U.S. announced plans to evacuate its embassy in the Ukrainian capital. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

7 thoughts on “The World to Russia: Bleep You”

  1. Powerful responses by the West!

    With all of these sanctions, the affects on the Russian people will be accelerated. 

    Instead of waiting months or even years for the ramifications to hit the Russian people's wallets, it may only take weeks or months instead.

    "L'Etat, c'est moi," I imagine Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin thinking to himself, a week ago.

    But this isn't 1956 Hungary, or Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the Soviet leader could get away with invading and occupying countries almost unopposed.  And even more importantly, largely hidden from the people of Russia, and the rest of the world's views.

    There was no internet then.  But there is now!

    Every few weeks or months, my brother-in-law gets on his laptop and holds video-calls with the members of his family who are still in Stavropol, Russia.

    The power of the internet also gives us live images of the  Russian military's activities.  In other words, " The whole world's watching!"

    I just saw a report on MSNBC that Putin's Oligarchs are freaking out.

    Good!

    But the question is, can any of them influence him, and to what extent?

    Or barring that, get their hands on some of Vlad's Polonium-210, and give him a taste of his own medicine?  

    But that won't happen.  A man like Putin is not reckless.  He'll be lashing out at everyone and everything.

    But despite that, we in the world want to end this crisis.

    Short of taking out Putin, we in the West need to figure out a way for that asshole to save face while he extracts himself from a trap of his own making.

    He doesn't deserve it.

    But neither do any of us deserve a nuclear exchange – let alone a nuclear war.

    The Russian people are aware of what Putin's done.  They won't soon forget.  

    Putin will want them to, but the Russian people have long, long memories.
    And the Ukrainianian’s memories are even longer.

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  2. From an armchair perspective, it IS tremendously fascinating, with ordinary people making use of the internet to organize and get the word out. This is probably the first hot war in the era of smart phones and social media, where the world is watching every move. Any citizen can be connected with others around the globe and have an audience of millions.

    Who could not be galvanized by video interviews (in the NYT) of women and children in the Ukraine running for the exits while their menfolk stay and fight? Or of the 39 year old Ukranian man in the UK who kissed his wife good bye, got in his car, and drove to the front.

    I am hopeful that not only will the oligarchs depose Putin, but ordinary Russians will rise up and put an end to autocracy in Russia. They have a leader, Nalvany who sits in prison. As Timothy Leary put it, until you're willing to risk jail time for your ideas, you're just an amateur. Seeing thousands illegally protest in St Petersburg tells me these people are serious, and they will suffer the brunt of the sanctions in Russia, while the Ukrainians suffer horrible bloodshed and destruction.

    We have our part in the US: aggressively hanging this around the neck of our right wingers at home. This should be a big theme of any Democrat running this November. These traitorous, self-righteous a$$holes, with blood on their hands, need to be vigorously shouted down, forced to crawl back under the rocks where they came from.  Waiting for powerful ads to splice together the mind-f$king word salad confusion of Tucker 'Putin' Carlson (our own Lord Hee-Haw (look it up)), the worst of the propagandists. As Ruth Ben Ghiat wrote, "everything he says is poison".

     

     

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  4. Russian banks are postponing opening time to 3pm.  That sounds significant. A bank run is made more likely than it already was if this is seen by the people as a sign of panic on the part of the big banks. 

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  6. The right praises and embraces Putin because they fantasize doing to "us" what Putin does to his victims.  Here's a man who has cheated to get himself elected; he has jailed, poisoned and killed his political enemies, shut down dissent and the press, lies as he breathes and shamelessly uses propaganda, creating a corrupt oligarchy that has enriched itself at the expense of the Russian people all to keep himself in power.  . Listening to Trump, Pompeo, Tucker Carlson, Ingraham and others, Putin is "smart," and a "genius" for having gotten away with it, including interfering in our elections to prop up his puppet on our soil.  They started crowing at the beginning of the invasion since they thought like he did that it would be another cakewalk, just like poisoning another defenseless victim. 

    But Ukraine has become a David vs Goliath story, and as the world rallied to their successful stand for democracy, our brave, patriotic wingnuts run from their own words like roaches for the exists when the lights come on, leaving them looking mighty small, not to mention traitorous. They're supposed to love "freedom" but their first and natural impulse is to rally to a dictator trying to take freedom away from the people of a democratic elected government. 

    They can have Putin; in fact democrats should tie him and their worship of him around their collective necks as we do as we've always done and support those standing and fighting for democracy, at home and abroad. 

    Ukraine! should become a rallying cry for democrats going into 2022.

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    • Ukraine! should become a rallying cry for democrats going into 2022.

      President Uncle Joe gives his first State of the Union speech tomorrow night.  Expect it to be heavy on Ukraine.  Hope that Joe will have some fire to breathe at the tRumpTard/Putin lovers.

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