Kaplya [none/use name]

Putin to Lukashenko yesterday:

Putin: In the energy sector, unfortunately, we observed a series of attacks on our energy facilities and were forced to respond. I want to emphasize: even for humanitarian reasons, we did not carry out any strikes in winter, meaning that we did not want to leave social institutions, hospitals, and so on without power supply. But after a series of attacks on our energy facilities, we were forced to respond. But I repeat again: if everything comes back to solving those issues that we talked about initially, and they are related to energy issues, including the solution to one of the tasks that we set for ourselves, and this is demilitarization. First of all, we proceed from the fact that in this way we influence the defense industry of Ukraine, and directly. But if we do move on to some conversations, to resolving all issues in other ways - well, of course, as I have said many times, we are ready for this.

I think that they - the opposite side - to a certain extent painted themselves into a corner when they refused to negotiate in the hope of defeating Russia on the battlefield, inflicting a strategic defeat on it. Now they understand that this is impossible, they refused to negotiate and are now in a rather difficult situation. Our goal is not to put everyone in a difficult position; on the contrary, we are ready to work constructively. But of course, there can be no imposition on us of any position that is not based on reality.

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If the Patriots failed to shoot down Scuds designed in the 1950s, no way in hell they’re ever going to intercept a Kinzhal:

Governments have overstated the effectiveness of missile defenses in the past, including against Scuds. During the first Gulf War, the United States claimed a near-perfect record in shooting down Iraqi variants of the Scud. Subsequent analyses found that nearly all the interceptions had failed.

Intercepting a missile is not the same as an airplane that flies at a much slower speed and a much larger target.

F-16s are not going to help. They need state-of-the-art F-35 stealth multirole fighters if they want to have a chance.

The US has more than 700 F-35s, and the Ukrainians need to have access to as many of them as possible for a coordinated strike to stand a chance against Russia.

How can F-16s engage without getting into Russian air defense range?

Mavericks air to ground has a 20km range. AMRAAM air to air is about 100km.

A Russian S-400 has 400km operational range. At the start of the war, a S-400 in south Belarus turned on its radar for a few minutes and shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 all the way in Kyiv, which then crashed into an apartment building and the Ukrainians proceeded to blame the Russians for targeting civilian structures.

But Ukraine is only a shit show for the US if you look at it militarily, and the US is certainly no stranger to losing in wars over the past century as a global hegemon.

The destabilization of Europe during the Ukraine war has effectively created a huge international capital flight into the US, mass de-industrialization and soon mass privatization of European assets as Europe pursues an austerity policy, the destruction of euro as a currency rival to the dollar, as well as the strengthening of the dollar as a result, the disruption of energy supply chain that netted huge profit for the American oil and gas sector, military buildups that grant billions of dollars of contracts to the American military industrial complex, and finally, dozens of billion of aid money to Ukraine that are laundered back to the American politicians and their proxies.

I’m not even going to go into the more conspiratorial territory like the eventual mass emigration of mostly white Europeans to the US as Europe inevitably sinks into fascism (which ironically is what the right wing conspiracy nuts feared about “The Great Replacement” except it’s a realistic plan under Biden to create a white supremacist state in America) to replace Chinese immigrants as the US prepares a war with China. All of these are projects underway that could eventually lay the groundwork for the Fourth Reich in America.

The strategy against China is going to be the same. De-stabilize the Asia-Pacific region, the blockade of which is going to block Chinese exports and shut down the global economy. This is why China couldn’t wait to speed up the Belt and Road Initiative and shift their entire transportation chain inland, to prevent the disastrous consequences of an imminent sea route blockade by the US.

However, the Belt and Road Initiative also has a critical flaw in that most (~70%) of its projects were funded in US dollar, which rendered the entire chain susceptible to US interference through financial warfare. This is why I always say that the only way for China (and the rest of the world) to come out on top is to de-dollarize aggressively. The longer they wait, the more vulnerable the entire system is to the threats posed by the global institutions controlled by the US.

Do not for a moment think that the US strategists are stupid. They may make mistakes (for example, they miscalculated and failed in defeating Russia), but they certainly have achieved a lot of their strategic goals (destroying Europe is a far bigger fish to fry than to defeat a weak economy like Russia, that is, a Europe-China alliance is far scarier to the US than a Russia-China alliance), and have a lot of cards left in their sleeves which they will ruthlessly dispense to make life harder for everyone else in the world. They’re not going to go down willingly, and if they had to, they’d rather take the whole world down with them.

Bloomberg also put out more or less the same thing (https://archive.ph/fAYpB) a week ago if you want a “credible” Western mainstream source.

I think this is exactly the plan. Biden needs Europe to be at war to trigger a mass exodus of (mostly) white Europeans fleeing war and poverty to America to make the dream of the Fourth Reich possible. The purging of Chinese students, academics and immigrants cannot possibly be done without them being replaced by another group of immigrants at the same time.

I mean no offense to the people who think that Trump is someone who can turn America into a full-blown white supremacist state, but they’re dead wrong. Without the ruthlessness of Biden, Trump could never get it off the ground in a million years.