If Russia is kicked out from SWIFT basically all their trade with the West is blocked. No one will trade goods without payment. You can still use physical cash to make purchases, but they announced they froze Russian Central Bank reserves too. So only the cash people in Russia physically have can be used. This will be a minute amount. This is basically similar to the Iranian sanctions.
They won't because Ukraine is blanketed in a Russian IADS bubble. If the US moves all its airforce assets into Europe NATO would theoretically win in a conventional conflict, but with massive losses of like a hundred aircraft, However Russia would target NATO airbases and deny them of that chance.
This is correct. Even blocking Afghanistan from using their own money from purchasing food and medicine. US politicians are quite evil.
After the 2014 Euromaidan coup happened in Ukraine, the US flew all the gold reserves in the Ukrainian central bank and exchanged them with US treasuries and dollars. This should be enough to make you realize how "grass-roots" the movement was.
It was a US operation from the beggining. Some say the US used $50 billion to bribe the Ukrainian top echelons to make it happen.
It is known they were paying Euromaidan protesters $1 million a day, and also gave another $50 million directly to the leads of the Euromaiden funneled directly into their bank accounts.
It is part of their strategy. They do what they accuse Russia of doing in the US. The US has a $500 million fund (besides the black budget) just to push anti-China propaganda.
Russia's economy has limited connections with the US economy. But Russia has ways it can strike back economically, both directly and indirectly.
Kharkiv and Odessa are going to be damned hard to take back because of this. The Ukrainian government troops aren't affraid of putting artillery inside cities near people's houses either. Kharkiv and Odessa are heavily suppressed by the most nationalist of their troops which were placed there to terrorize the local Russian ethnic population into submission.
You already forgot the coups in Belarus and Kazakhstan last months? The US objective is to undermine and co-opt all states bordering Russia, pump them up with their old weapons stocks, fund them just enough to keep their economy floating, and then turn them against Russia. Secessionist coups are sponsored inside Russia like the one in Chechnya. Politicians and NGOs with anti-Russian interests like Navalny are sponsored with NED money.
Europe has turned completely to the US side at least two years ago. They no longer have an independent policy. Macron is probably one of the few European politicians who tried to do this but he is incompetent. The current German leadership is more than incompetent, they are just Atlanticist trash.
Try reading about the Antonov airport seizure close to Kiev. This is false. The Russians are using their airforce to strike enemy vehicle columns.
US ISR doesn't seem to be that much use to them. Ukrainian central control has collapsed enough they are shooting themselves and claiming their own people are Russian infiltrators. In Kiev, last night, they killed their own internal ministry forces retreating back into the city claiming they were a Russian military column. Armed Ukrainian civilians shot a civilian green Jeep they thought was a Russian military vehicle. They claim an island near Odessa had 12 of their troops and that they fought to the last, and there were like 72 and they all surrendered to Russia. It is quite obvious central control is gone.
I have only seen images of a couple of Russian vehicles destroyed. Like a T-80BVM and a T-72B3. Two or three Ka-62 helicopters.
In comparison I have seen whole logistic columns of Ukrainian military disabled, and a tank and IFV column also disabled and abandoned. Other loses which are claimed to be Russian losses with dark olive green paint seem to be using Soviet era vehicles owned by the separatists. Not Russian army.
There is no such thing as a clock. The all mighty NATO against tiny Serbia, a nation with around 7 million, had to bomb them for three months straight as they were too scared to send their ground forces in. They only did this after Serbia surrendered after the massive aerial bombardment. Serbia still had most of their armed forces intact in the end since they moved them at night and kept them hidden.
I think the Russian game plan is to take the South and slowly encircle the Ukrainian troops in the East while leaving them an escape route to the West. They then threaten Kiev. Once the Ukrainian army in the East tries to go back to Kiev via the open terrain to reinforce Kiev, they will be obliterated by mass artillery attacks and aviation bombardment. Zelensky, that dolt, ordered the troops in the East to move back to Kiev just a couple hours ago.
Once those troops are obliterated I expect the Russians to move into all the cities on the contact line and Kiev simultaneously at the same time they close the logistics routes from the West with an air bombardment campaign with missiles.
The Poles don't want Middle Eastern immigrants from Belarus either. Just shows how these people are.
They have air superiority allright. Just not air supremacy. Their air forces are designed to work that way. It is unlike US doctrine.
Why do you think they moved only a small amount of troops? You don't need a huge logistics train to do troop exercises. They did not move a lot of those resources to the border before to keep up appearances.
