Thoughts on Ukraine vs Russia vs America vs NATO

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
54
1895

Here are my thoughts on Ukraine vs Russia vs America vs NATO

It is stupid to pretend that Russia wouldn’t see Western incursions of influence into the Ukraine as anything other than provocation. Russia has every right to demand spheres of influences and buffers to Western influence as much as the West demands it.

The recent attempt at regime change uprisings seeded by CIA Hybrid War tactics in Kazakhstan will confirm in Russian minds that regime change is America’s active position.

This makes the Ukrainian Saber rattling even more dangerous.

Putin sees a weak Biden and an opportunity to build a bigger buffer while keeping the Ukraine weak and embattled.

Putin has 125000 troops and could surge that with 75 000 more but the maximum weight of forces falls well short of the at least 400000 troops Russia would need to occupy the entire country.

My guess is that Russia will seek to annex parts of the Ukraine that support its separatist movement and assets that empower its Caspian Sea assets.

My guess is Russia will wait until after the Winter Olympics.

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My guess is that if Russia takes this action you will see it shadowed by China who will also take the opportunity to symbolically push back against American interests leaving a weak Biden to do nothing.

As NZ, we should not get dragged into this madness.

 

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54 COMMENTS

  1. Russia wont invade all of the Ukraine. Totally not possible to invade (the easy part) and to hold (the hard part). You only have to see the German invasions of countries in WW2. Very hard to hold especially as the years roll on and your army is constantly fighting a guerilla war with partisans.

    Another aspect to consider is social and financial.

    The Donbass region, after seven years of war, is now such a basket case socially and financially that even if the Ukraine got control of the region, it would cost over $20 billion just to reintegrate Donbass back into the Ukraine.

    It is actually in the interest of the Ukraine to let the Donbass region fester and the Russians pick up the tab for social services.

    Worth a read

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/06/ukraine-better-without-donbass-costly-reconstruction-pro-russia-west/

    “For all these reasons, reintegrating the Donbass will reverse much of the progress Ukraine has made in the last five years. But it could make things even worse for two further reasons.

    First, the economy of the eastern Donbass is in free fall, and its GDP may have contracted by more than 75 percent since 2014. Unemployment is high, infrastructure has been neglected, and the industrial base, which was already in extreme disrepair in 2014, has only gotten more decrepit. That’s bad for the people there, and to fix the problems would cost Ukraine around $20 billion, according to economist Anders Aslund, and probably more. Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of money, and it is extremely unlikely that the European Union or the United States—not to mention Russia—would contribute significantly to reconstruction.”

    and

    https://razumkov.org.ua/en/articles/the-price-of-russia-s-might

    “The annexed Crimea places another financial burden on the Russian Federation. In 2017, subsidies from the federal budget make up $ 1.4 billion – in other words, Moscow finances about 73% of all Crimea’s annual budget expenditures! The Crimea is a chronically subsidised region, draining the resources of ordinary Russian citizens, and making the slogan “Crimea is ours!” an expensive business (and this does not include the covert budget items such as military spending). By the way, federal costs for Crimea are similar to annual budgets of the neighbouring Bryansk and Belgorod regions.”

    It is plain the neither the USA nor Russia can sustain a long term war for the destroyed Donbass region. Similarly China cannot sustain a long term war for Taiwan.

    One thing to sabre rattle. Quite another to take to the road, occupy, hold and pay for the maintenance of occupied territories.

    • We entered the twenty first century with America fading as the worlds only super power. They won’t make it to the end.

  2. I just can’t believe that so much attention could be paid to this. Efforts to reduce tensions on the Russian border should be welcomed. An armed conflict involving Russia and America, right now, would be catastrophic.

    I was watching some fossil with an American flag behind him (could have been the US secretary of state, who knows???) on the television telling the Russian army to return to barracks and the Russians was on there own land!

    Russia has conventional 2nd Strick torpedoes that can travel thousands of kilometres at 100 kilometres per hour. In other words it’s the U.S. Navy that should return to port.

    I mean who ever is leading the Military Industrial Complex of The United States of America is clinically insane.

    • Not only are the usa neo-cons and military insane ,,,, they also think we are stupid with their low grade lies that our dirty media report as facts ….

      This 5 minute clip highlights the in your face bullshit that the usa serves up as they gear up for war … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B93Erm4o1Q

      Also,,,,,, note how the warmongering countries sending ‘goodwill weapons’ into Ukraine as they try to ignite a war ,,,, the usa, britian and canada ,,,, that they are not the countries who will get swamped by the refugees their war would create.

      And Never mind the nukes ,,, “To my knowledge Russian state media have not been telling Russians that a world war between nuclear-armed nations is “all but certain”. To the best of my knowledge only western propagandists are indoctrinating westerners with such madness. ” …

      .. “withered gerontocrats in the US government bravely proclaim that it’s time to give Putin a “bloody nose” over the latest tensions. It comes as tons of US-supplied weapons pour into Ukraine, and it comes as the US president himself announces that he believes a Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely. These people are playing games with the lives of everyone on our planet, and they don’t even seem to understand that that’s what they’re doing.” https://caitlinjohnstone.com/

      “How Canada emerged as a haven for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/29/cauk-j29.html

      https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-right-wing-checkpoint-for-canadas-intervention-in-ukraine

  3. New Zealand is in this mess, Ardern fawns over the US war machine on our behalf, the same US who just sent a goodwill package of armaments to the neonazi Ukrainians (Ardern herself fluctuates between acting like Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler on any given day).

  4. A lot of guessing there Martyn.
    What we do know is that the USA is hellbent on destroying Russia and will foist a war upon them like they do everywhere else. In the meantime they are ultra busy “manufacturing consent” for it with all their blatant propaganda and foolish actions.
    It is well past time the World woke up to the pointless chaos, death and destruction the Americans spread in their pursuit of total World dominance.
    I do believe the Americans are stupid enough to end life as we know it.

  5. If possible, the world should encourage the turning of Ukraine into a Swiss-type neutral zone area. This is one conflicted area that does not need to exist

    • I suspect the Russians would be happy with that. Gorbachev was given verbal guarantees that NATO would not expand Eastwards if he allowed the Soviet Union to break up. but these of course were American weasel-words, and meant nothing. USA now claims that an independent nation like the Ukraine should have the right to belong to any defensive organisation it wants to. But the US hypocrites would immediately apply the Munroe doctrine if any Central- or South-American nation (eg, Cuba?) invited Russia to become an ally and put weapons on their soil as the US has inveigled the Ukraine to do.
      Yes, make the Ukraine a neutral zone: Peace and justice.
      But that is not what the USA wants.

    • Strange biz, Ukraine was assured of territorial integrity by Russia in return for giving up nuclear missiles. They broke that agreement. Entirely logical a democracy so attacked should seek help from other democracies for solidarity against an autocracy. The wrong is with the violence, force, necessary to non-democracies — if Ghana can do it why not great Russia? No reason. Finlandization is a tempting thought in the present circs however. However acridizing to the wound of democrats.

      • Can you call Ukraine a democracy when the peaceful Russian leaning democratically elected govt was regime changed? Or when the minor nationalities in the country arent treated democatrically. Or when NeoNaziNationalists hold sway in the current regime.

  6. Seems to me that Russia has concerns for the many ethnic Russians in the Donbas. Kiev has been ignoring the Minsk agreement and constantly threatening and occasionally shelling the breakaway region; and threatening to invade and re assert control of te breakaway region. Russia does not want to interfere with Ukraine’s internal politics so has not recognised the Donbas as a seperate state, but has concerns about the people there who would be slaughtered in an all out invasion of Donbas by Kiev.So is standing ready to assist if Kiev mounts a major assault. Further reason for this is the obvious intent of the US to place missiles on Russia’s border 5 minutes from Moscow once Kiev has control of the border.
    The majority of Ukraine citizens do not see Russia as a threat or an enemy and they are not. They are the meat in the sandwich. The constant talk about Russia invading Ukraine is to divert Western public attention from the fact that Russia does not see Ukraine as the threat or as the enemy but US and NATO are , and it is the source of the threat that Russia is interested in quelling not the meat in the sandwich. It is citizens in the US and Europe that are in the firing line if anyone is.
    D J S

  7. Nato keep provoking Russia and hopefully Russia gives Nato a nice little bite on their arse

    I’m all for Nato getting wasted

  8. Poor cartoon.

    The reason the USSR commenced installation of missile in Cuba was the installation of missiles in Turkey -aimed straight at Moscow.

    The crisis was solved when the US agreed to remove the [US] missiles in Turkey, and the USSR no longer needed to counter that threat.

    Anything that cones from the US government, or the UK government or the NZ government, any other of the fake democracies, can be taken to be a lie. And anything that is promulgated by the corrupt mainstream media can be taken to be a lie.

    Why repeat their lies?

    • Slavoj Zizek calls on other philosophers in stating that everything that we follow, do or say is a fiction. So the inbuilt lies are part of the fiction that we carry with us in our personal memory sacs. Evans does great cartoons that show us the noticeable rents in our fictions.

      What Zizek doesn’t say (in the condensed graphic primer that I am reading) is that we create wonderful, complex fictions, symbolic ones, and constantly move between the facts of our creation and the theories and ideas that swirl round them. So you can never know the real truth, because it is changing all the time slightly perhapos and depending on one’s perspective. Reaching for the latest approximation of a universal truth requires thought so don’t put down people who are active in the quest Afwktt. That’s a symbolic name for someone who desires the world to stop spinning for long enough to grasp the situation in stasis for a short time.

    • Yep. If you’re still getting your daily news from the MSM (especially rubbish like The New Zealand Herald or anything produced by TVNZ), you are almost certainly being either partially or completely lied to for propaganda purposes. All governments only exist with the consent of the governed, so it is in the best interests of all governments to brainwash people into believing they are working hard on our behalf. We really need a hard reboot (and I don’t mean “The Great Reset” being engineered by The Davos Agenda, although that is probably what we’re going to get).

  9. 1943, 2 February. Russia kicked the Germans arses all the way back to Berlin and also beat the US and Britain there too. Will they do it again?

    • Or option 2;

      “Russia is 100 miles inland from their border. Ukraine doesn’t have the artillery to reach more than a few miles. They will have to attack first to get close enough to engage with the Russian Army who will sit in wait for them to enter the ‘Killing Zone!’ The first 30 miles inland on Russian soil. Then they will hammer them with their long reaching heavy artillery!

      • Option 3,

        Putin has sold the Big Bluff!
        He has Nato split.
        Europe is split and the US calling him all the time to make peace on their terms. Neit.

        He’s got the Germans split. The Greens still wanna talk because they’re feeling the cold and their partners are unsure about a conflict with Russia but towing the US line.

        Nato is fuck’d because of their ‘rules’ not letting the Ukraine join NATO whilst in a dispute with another country.

        Macron trying to milk it and have it both ways by calling for no action from NATO and ignoring the US, utu for the cancelled Submarines to Australia. And as well he has an election coming so he wants to distract the French from the shit he has at home.

        And all Putin can do is sit and wait, watch the mad dogs of Europe run around barking at each other and chase one another’s tails.

        It looks like a student of Sun Tzu, the Art of War?

    • well back in the cold war, admittedly the soviets were based further west, NATO estimated that between 1 week and 10days red army tanks would be on the channel coast.
      The plan was that the british and german armies should fight and die on the central german plain whilst the yanks brought in occupation troops to man ‘the unsinkable aircraft carrier’

      maybe the poles, balts etc should have a little think on how good an an ally the yanks would be…

  10. Since war is about money and since everybody just loves money then war is inevitable. We should know that by now.
    Since my fantasy of having the leaders of potentially warring countries all sit down with great food and music and take ecstasy to reach an alternative to killing and destroying is unlikely to say the least then surely the next best option is to make ecstasy readily available to the soldiers, sailors and pilots who will be doing the dirty work of turning other human beings into burning mince, to turn over good coin for the global war industry, it should be written.
    I’ve been in fights back in the day. Some of them became vicious and it was always when the combatants were pissed. I can tell you, from experience, that savagely hurting another while on E is impossible. What if there was a way of diverting people away from careers in the war machine and into truely worthwhile endeavours like farming, the sciences and AI ?
    “What if they gave a war and no one turned up? ”
    The anti-war slogan “Suppose they gave a War and Nobody Came” was the title of a 1966 essay by Charlotte Keys, the mother of an activist son was imprisoned for refusing to serve after being drafted, that was published in McCall’s magazine. The 1970 comedy “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came” was a cinematic depiction of the tension between the World War II generation and the anti-war movement of the 1960s in the US.
    Wikipedia:
    “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppose_They_Gave_a_War_and_Nobody_Came

    • Music soothes the savage beast is a saying. I think each country should put forward a choir in a world competitio n at regular intervals with judges from all over, and the winning country gets the majority of time in discussion about international concerns. Only a limited amount of table thumping and shouting is allowed and when the bell goes everyone withdraws for an aperitif or two.

      Then next day mid-morning reconvene, rehash and look at what is possible to meet everyone’s reasonable needs and of course there will be absent friends who are included in the discussions by video. They will be intransigent but everyone says we will make some concessions, what are your most pressing problems and needs, now and in the future and why do you feel you have to increase your industrial output and so on.
      An explain yourself approach with reasons for actions that are referred to openly. Maybe. Perhaps.

      • Ahh music….well there is money in music, as much as the armaments trade, so when the two meet we have a copyright war, in that military technology, which is always a closely guarded secret and deployed way ahead of what the proles get to see on Wired magazine, I mean the surveillance tech, is just fine and dandy for pre-emptive data capture of any kind.
        The billions collected in worldwide ‘royalty’ scams are not just spent on the Maybachs and gold chains as per advertisments.

    • One instance of averting War….
      ‘In 1884 the leaders of fourteen European countries and the United States came together to discuss control of Africa’s resources. Known as The Berlin Conference, they sought to discuss the partitioning of Africa, establishing rules to amicably divide resources among the Western countries at the expense of the African people.’

  13. The Clinton/Obama faction that controls the old coot hate Putin and Russia simply because they can’t control him. For Putin it is about respect and he’ll bankrupt Russia to get it. Interesting how when Trump was in power none of these shenanigans occurred.

    • Bankrupt Russia? Are you kidding? Russia has massive resources of Oil, Gas, Gold etc, etc. They don’t have any Govt DEBT! Putin’s de-dollarisation of the Russian Economy & Banking Industry has future proofed them from American threats & Sanctions Warfare! Militarily, Russia can’t be defeated & the US knows it despite their ignorant, arrogant chest puffing bullshit? That’s one reason, among many others, on why Russia is hated by the West? The primary reason is Russia refuses to submit to the Neoliberal model as set up by America & the West & its desire to maintain its own Sovereignty! Another major reason is Russia setting a example for other Nations to trade in other currencies other than the US Dollar which can’t be tolerated by the US Empire? Notice any Nations who tried to drop & bypass the US dollar like Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela & others have been destroyed or sanctioned? America, unlike Russia, on paper are $21 Trillion in Debt with no way of ever paying that back & thats the official reported amount? Off the Books it’s more like $100 Trillion. Once it loses it’s World’s Reserve currency status its Game over for the US Empire & Russia & China know this, its just a matter of time & that time is fast running out! The buffoonish Boris Yelstin damn near bankrupted Russia, not Putin, who has rebuilt Russia Militarily & Economically!

      • Dead right.
        As far as negotiations are going Lavrov makes mincemeat out of Blinken.
        He even quoted Gerald Ford to him…’you will not be remembered for the promises you made…but for the promises ..you kept’!

      • INDEED antforce, the shadow behind the US funding of brexit was the yanks antipathy to the euro as an alternative to the dollar, unfortunately for them the EU didn’t collapse the UK is and biden fearing the irish/american lobby won’t help out the UK…
        in the words of Mr Lydon..’ it’s all falling apart…. gloriously’ goodbye UK another blowback for US black ops…hence boris ‘the yank’ de piffles eagerness to sabre rattle on the ukraine….distraction from disintegration urgently needed.

    • when Trump was in power

      When you little mr instability, mr erratic tantrumps was “in power” the US Defence forces were in a freaking panic as to if or when the idiot might throw a tantrum and push the ‘red button’ — They had to work out how prevent him ever using the nuclear codes, they were so worried.

      • If you believe that you will believe anything. You dont have to like Trump to understand the lying and conniving bullshit coming from his opponents.

        • It was the idiot himself who boasted on twitter, eg, that he had a “bigger and more powerful” “nuclear button” than Kim Jong Un had in North Korea.

          Twitter deleted those tweets (they were so crazy) so I can’t bring them back up.
          The evidence of his madness were from him directly, first and foremost.

        • The discussions about this were far reaching and began as early as Nov 2016!
          The Diplomat, Could Trump start a nuclear war – Discusses presidential powers, eg:
          For example, the United States maintains a so-called Launch Under Attack capability, which demands that the U.S. military detect the launch of Russian ICBMs and launch retaliatory nuclear strikes before Russian missiles take out U.S. land-based missile silos on the continental United States. (As recently as 2013, the president ordered the U.S. Department of Defense to retain this capability under its Nuclear Employment Strategy.)

          Under such a scenario, laid out in great detail by Jeffrey Lewis and Dave Schmerler in August 2016, President Trump would have less than eight minutes from the first call to the White House until the last moment he can act and decide to launch the 400 land-based nuclear-armed ICBMs before Russian missiles have started to detonate on American soil and destroy U.S. missile silos.

        • The concern over what the-erratic-one might do, spanned the years he was in the office of presidency. This from his last days trying to hold on to that office:
          https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/2/trump-may-launch-reckless-attack-iran-experts-fear

          US President Donald Trump could take “reckless” military action against Iran in his final days in office, experts have warned, as tensions between Tehran and Washington mount on the eve of the first anniversary of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani’s assassination.

          The US flew B-52 bombers over the Gulf three times in the past month, most recently on Wednesday, in what the Trump administration called a deterrence measure to keep Iran from retaliating on January 3, the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing in a US drone strike.

    • naw frank he just started an unwinnable trade war with china and lived in constant fear of putins ‘golden shower’ polaroids

  15. These guys are to the right of me but are very good on Russia ,,, and anti-Russia is what the Ukraine mess is all about https://youtu.be/YF1J7YZBy94?t=3737

    Also this chap is a pro-American hawk ,,, but on the Ukraine mess he tells more or less the truth ,,,, what makes his accuracy all the more impressive is the date his talk was recorded
    https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?list=TLPQMjIwMTIwMjLuOVr5Y5GvBQ&t=1470

    Finally the sub-set of dirty politics that was John Key and his 9th floor of the beehive may be gone ,,,, but our dirty media rolls on, and it’s feeding out dangerous misinformation shit by the shovel load when it comes to Russia/the west. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?list=TLPQMjIwMTIwMjLuOVr5Y5GvBQ&t=1057

    • hey reason, your middle link, the munroe doctrine he speaks of seven years ago, regarding influences of the east/west diaspora, well hunter biden said, “I shit on your munroe doctrine, I’ll blow up what I want with this…”, and he holds up a g-tec BCI cap.

    • The irony here is that the current regime in Ukraine was a result of a plot to install an anti-Russian puppet government.

  17. Russia wont invade Ukraine, their armed forces could destroy those of Ukraine without ever crossing the border.

    Most importantly Russias’ best interests are to save themselves the aggro of a failed state. Putin wants NATO off his doorstep, he would probably like Galicia where the Nazi sympathisers come from to be Polands problem, and for Donetsk to return to Russia by plebiscite.

    So why is NATO aka USA pushing so hard? Follow the money, they want control of the supply of gas and oil to Europe. They want control of how Russia sells energy to the world.

    • NATO is dreaming big things if they think an oil and gas pipeline past Libya or Georgia will last one financial quarter with out the blessing of Putin. America is just insane, through my and though.

  18. I like your comments Martyn. If Russia does move on Ukraine and
    liberates the eastern areas of Ukraine. That is a good thing. The NAZI’s, who control Zelenski and the Ukrainian government ,(Illegitimately installed by Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland) need to be destroyed. NATO is an organisation looking for a cause. It is past its use by date and should be disbanded. Russia has no designs on Europe but the NATO bureaucracy will lose their jobs and power if an external enemy is not created. It is time the people realised western governments are not acting in their interests but in the interests of large corporates that would rape Russia of her natural resources. Russia will legitimately share its resources at the market price. Fuck’n Americans want everything for them selves. Putin is the man. Germany
    has seen the light, despite the. deranged Greens that have some power now , and stopped the UK flying weapons into Ukraine over German territory

    Uk

  20. This is replay of “Wag the dog” movie happening in front of us. Biden desperately needs something to divert people’s attention from the failures of his administration.

    Let’s be honest. Russia never wanted Eastern Ukraine, nor Ukraine itself. Russia wanted Ukraine out of NATO and was willing to pay large sums (in form of natural gas subsidies and rentals on the Sebastopol base) and take insults from Ukraine. In 2014 this was not an option anymore, so Russia did only thing it could, to prevent Ukraine joining NATO – created a territorial dispute with Ukraine (annexation of Crimea). Could Russia have annexed Crimea. This is a repeat of situation with Georgia, that also expressed strong desire to join NATO and ended up in the same situation in 2008.

    Russia had 3-4 opportunities to take over large swaths of Ukraine in recent years and passed on all of them. First simply respecting the results of referendum in Donbass in 2014 could have been pretext for annexation of Donbass as well. Russia didn’t want Donbass. Then the defeat of Ukrainian army under Ilovaysk happened, where ukrainian army was in a complete rout and both Donbass and Dnepropetrovsk could have been taken with zero effort. Russia didn’t want it, in fact Russia stopped the advance of the rebels by killing many field commanders of rebel force. Same thing happened after rout of the Ukrainian forces under Debaltsevo, ukrainian forces are running, Russia yelling at rebels to stop…

    Current situation coverage is purely journalistic fraud. An anonymous source leaks some complete bs to newspapers and all of a sudden, the tail wags the dog.

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