Thats because Putin was waging something called "brother war"..
These days we are at the "cousin war"
Maybe by next week we will be in "friend war"
Ukrainian War Developments
- Thread starter james smith esq
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These days we are at the "cousin war"
Maybe by next week we will be in "friend war"
Former NATO commander Gen. Clarke has read the Russian playbook and dismisses the theory that chemical weapons may be used as far-fetched. He says that if the Russians truly want to deter NATO they may use a low yield nuclear weapon. However, he says it is unlikely they would use it against Ukraine. Rather they would probably detonate it over some of the staging areas in say Poland to throw the ball in NATO's court:
So Putin wouldn’t have to put up with hecklers when address a large coterie of world leaders?
Lethe
Captain
One question about this conflict that I haven't seen adequately addressed to this point is: why now? What were the immediate factors that precipitated this invasion now rather than in 2015, 2019, four months ago, or four months from now?
It's clear that diplomacy is part of the answer to this question, with high-level negotiations occurring between Moscow, Paris, Washington, etc. in the months preceding the invasion. From Putin's perspective, it's plausible that diplomacy may have reached the "end of the road". Yet the failure of diplomacy would not seem to require an immediate military response, or for the next step to be a full-scale "regime change operation" rather than more limited kinetic activity. This would still appear to be a war of choice to be waged on Moscow's timetable, which brings us back to the question of how extraordinarily unprepared Russian forces have appeared to be for the task they have been given.
I have seen some suggestion from pro-Russia sources that Ukraine was planning a major offensive in the Donbas region that would have threatened to "resolve" the situation there. This seems a superficially plausible casus belli, but it really needs to be fleshed out better in terms of sourcing and detail before I can readily accept it.
It's clear that diplomacy is part of the answer to this question, with high-level negotiations occurring between Moscow, Paris, Washington, etc. in the months preceding the invasion. From Putin's perspective, it's plausible that diplomacy may have reached the "end of the road". Yet the failure of diplomacy would not seem to require an immediate military response, or for the next step to be a full-scale "regime change operation" rather than more limited kinetic activity. This would still appear to be a war of choice to be waged on Moscow's timetable, which brings us back to the question of how extraordinarily unprepared Russian forces have appeared to be for the task they have been given.
I have seen some suggestion from pro-Russia sources that Ukraine was planning a major offensive in the Donbas region that would have threatened to "resolve" the situation there. This seems a superficially plausible casus belli, but it really needs to be fleshed out better in terms of sourcing and detail before I can readily accept it.
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Intrepid
Major
That is the essential question, because the Russian army was not yet ready for this war. But for some reason, from Putin's point of view, it must have been the last possible moment.
Some, here, have discussed the timing, ‘tho not in great detail. It’s my opinion that this was more Putinini’s, rather than Moscow’s timetable, unless, of course, ”l’etat, c’est Putinini”!
I've seen some say it might been because Zelensky 'recently' went on a show or something where he kinda said that Ukraine could/should get nukes even if they couldn't get into NATO or something like that.
(and then some rumour/speculation that the US actually send a squad with a small tactical nuke to Ukraine, which got recalled by Biden)
The trigger that made it imperative for Russia to positively stop Ukraine’s slide towards NATO was the withdrawal of the US from intermediate range nuclear forces treaty in 2019. But in 2019 with trump still in office, Putin could perhaps hope this can be achieved by prodding the feckless trump to effectively withdraw the US from NATO and thus dissolve NATO during trump’s second term. Once trump clearly lost in Jan 2021 and it became clear the US would be in the hands of a much less feckless hardline anti-Russian hawk, Putin probably decided to set in motion a showdown with the US over Ukraine, backed by the force needed to take Ukraine if the US does not back down. According to US intelligence, Russian forces began to prepare staging areas and assemble forces starting in February 2021.
It is not clear if the movement of the forces and all the back ground conflict preparations, including perhaps behind the scene efforts to harden Russian economy or IT infrastructure in preparation of worst case scenario planned, took a Full year.
Perhaps Putin intentionally made his build up occur at a deliberate pace to create opportunity for the US to climb down from its public stance on Ukraine.
Perhaps there is some consideration that encourages Putin to time the occasion of the crisis coming to a head with a optimal time for conducting any resulting military operation. Perhaps there is advantage to conducting. Winter offensive after the ground had frozen but in perpetration started in February 2021 was too late to facilitate a 2021 winter offensive.
But in the context of Biden’s election created the imperative to engineer a show down over Ukraine, the timing of the Ukrainian invasion a year after Biden’s inauguration becomes much easier to understand.
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