well, he nationalized several hundred commercial aircraft owned by western leasing firms. This is the reason why the story of Russia requesting parts for these aircraft from china is credible.
The Russians are still working on this situation. But from what I understand the aircraft they seize are planned to be refunded in rubles.
The Russians will basically terminate the lease and pay the residual on the value of the aircraft.
The EU did this to themselves by freezing the Euros the Russian Central Bank had and unilaterally terminating the leases.
The fundamental short sightedness of the west lies in the fact that Russia will not go down in defeat like the third reich because of ukraine. Russia is not out to conquer the world more than the usual revanchist power, and not nearly in the same overreaching league as the third reich or imperial japan. So a bigger war in which russia will go down in defeat is not imminent. So the west has to continue to deal with and engage russia in the near future.
Instead of keeping this in mind the west has climbed onto a horse that seems very high only to itself, but a horse that is very difficult to climb down from nonetheless.
It will not end with Ukraine. Putin said it before the war started. This is all about NATO expansion. Until NATO goes back to the ABM, INF, and Conventional Forces in Europe treaties they pulled out of, the reasons for conflict will still be there.
And I totally get where you're coming from. But even if we agree with that standard, some people may argue that it's still not clear who won. After all, Russia is not the only country that had objectives before this thing started; so did Ukraine. One of Ukraine’s central objectives, if you believe Zelensky and his officials, was to preserve the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
If they wanted to really do that Ukraine should have accepted the Minsk agreements. It would have settled the situation in the Donbass and Crimea could have been taken care of later. But the Ukrainians thought Russia was a pushover. So they got this situation. I think they will be lucky if they lose only the Donbass and Crimea. I doubt they will get the Kherson Oblast back for one.
If Putin thinks he can use nukes without catching some in the face in return he's even dumber than this war is making him look.
You are the one who proposed for the US to nuke Sevastopol. You are an idiot who thinks the US has an advantage in deployed strategic weapons. This is false and anyone who knows the current strategic situation would tell you that. Russia has over a thousand strategic nukes in service, not counting ones in storage, they can wipe the entire Northern Hemisphere out of the map if they wanted to.
They just reframed their operation as just taking Donbass, a massive admission of defeat.
Actually it sounded more like an escalation to me. He said the original plan was to destroy the forces the Ukrainians have deployed around Donbass. But given the current situation where Ukraine is refusing to withdraw their forces from Donbass they are giving consideration to proceed with the option of entering Ukrainian cities. And in fact they already are doing this.
Russia simply doesn't have the forces necessary to fight Ukraine and win.
Have you ever read about the Norman Conquest of England? The Normans were also supposed to have lost there.
They should have mobilized their whole population for a much bigger war by now. They should have put atleast 600k ground force by mobilizing reserves.
So the US could have just nuked their entire army on the field? No the Russians are doing just fine with this plan.
