Ukrainians are claiming that leaving Severodonetsk was a deliberate trap for the Russians. I am not really buying it -- but we will wait & see. Twitter thread with four posts
The OPEC countries have more financial, military and economical interests in the Western world then in Russia. So kicking out Russia if needed, is no issue.
This is an interesting read -- directly from the mouth of a Russian soldier as taken directly from his instagram account. Provides some clear perspectives on what the Russian soldiers think and their activities in Ukraine. The Russian Soldier Turned Social Media Star — Revealing More Than Putin Might Like Anatoly Dremov shares his experiences of the war in Ukraine on the Russian Telegram network – and reveals details that don't always line up with the Kremlin narrative. https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/anatoly-dremov-russian-soldier-social-media Artur Weigandt June 03, 2022 DIE WELT English edition • Worldcrunch “That damn Ukrainian 'dill' shot up our tank,” a young soldier says into his cell phone camera. Dill is Russian slang for “Ukrainian Nazis.” The soldier squats in a car. The camera pans to the street. Destroyed apartment buildings roll by, destroyed tanks and civilian vehicles too. Then a change of scene: several soldiers, all wearing the Russian Z on their sleeves. “It doesn’t matter at all who we meet on the way to victory: young Ukrainians, old Ukrainians. They’ll all get it.” (Much more at above url)
Putin continues, day after day, to lean on Belarus to send troops into Ukraine. While Lukashenko plays the old game that Putin did "just training exercises." The Ukrainians are spread very thin around the country and they are getting worn down too, and I discipline myself against getting cocky because they are so greatly outnumbered. Having said that, I am going to make an exception with the Belarus soldiers. The Ukrainians will kill most of them. They are seriously, seriously untrained and seriously not interested in fighting in Ukraine and lots of them are enlisting in the Ukrainian army. And the Ukrainians are fifty times more prepared to deal with them than they were to deal with the Russians when they showed up in Kiev, which as we know did not go well. The Ukainians need to watch their arse but Putin's needs to watch his too. He moved troops down from Kiev to the donbass and is trying to set the Belarus up to be the full-time harassers of the Kiev region to keep the Ukrainians occupied and unable to move more men to the donbass. That's a stupid fucking plan. The casualty rate among the Belarus will be ungodly. The other thing the Belarus need to think about is that the Ukrainians are getting longer range missiles and, yes, there is great concern about sending them deep into Russia, but, hey, NO ONE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT BELARUS, EH? Lukashenko is an easy target to pick on because he clearly does not want to be drawn into the war. He is just trying to keep Putin off his arse. If they send one soldier into Ukraine, then Ukraine should lob a couple a big ones right into Belarus just to put them on notice. The civilians there are not on board with the war or with Lukashenko either. Russian War Report: Signs of renewed Belarusian troop movements towards Ukrainian border https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blo...ar-report-signs-of-renewed-belarusian-troops/
Lukashenko plays the fool but is quite savvy. He is way too smart to attack Ukraine. Corrupt and autocratic to the core though.
I can see the way he dances and postures around the border for months without going in, which confirms that whether out of fear or smarts he has developed a set of reasons to stay out. Putin is leaning on him hard though. Lukashenko simply takes advantage of the fact that Ukraine does not have a military large enough to go on the offensive. He avoids going into Ukraine but openly allows his country to be used as a staging ground for Russian troops to attack Ukraine. If they did that to a country that had a larger military or to Nato, they would pay a price for that.
Putin will eek out some kind of turf win. But where both Putin and Luvashenko are out of touch is in their assumption that sanctions will be lifted as a condition of ending the war. Might be some areas where there is an agreement but basically they are relegated to economic Siberia for a long time to come. Even if one accepts the fact that the west has a short attention span, they are not going away as part of a war end deal. I have read Lukashenko complaining about the sanctions and saying that is one reason why we want to end the war, as if to say that there is an assumption that sanctions would be lifted. Nope. And in regard to Vlad, he talks that way every day, including today. He keeps proposing that if the west lifts sanctions he will allow ukrainian grain to ship. WTF. I think Lukashenko thinks that Putin is going to eek out a win that will tidy all that up and put the genie back in the bottle in regard to sanctions. Nope. He will just get to hear Putin reminding him how great it is to have the donbass back or something. Not sure that floats Lukashenko's boat.
I agree. Both Putin and Lukashenko are counting on the West's "fatigue". They have somewhat of a foundation for that, since Western countries have a long tradition of betraying the people they used to support. I think this time it's different. A dog that bites someone once can be tolerated. Rabid dogs have to be put down. This time the sanctions are not based on lofty principles but on pure self-interest. When a neighbor beats his wife, that's one thing. When a neighbor goes to another neighbor's house, beats him and his wife and trashes the place, the neighborhood better organize against him.