Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Fantastic.

"People" might have said he wouldn't do it...but most of the intelligence said he would. The US indicated it would happen pretty well before it did.

He might have thought he could roll over into Europe...but either way Ukraine have stopped that for now imo...be clearly didn't expect the resistance and the fact other countries would rally when it came to supplies military and otherwise

@wylo

"I'll invade an entire country - a large European country at that, right on the edge of the EU, with aspirations to join the EU and NATO.... and that'll be... kind of fine?" - Vova

I have a hard time believing he thought in a million years that he could invade Ukraine without massive international blowback. If he really did think that then he is either delusional or would want to sack his advisors forthwith.

It would have to be the most spectacular military intelligence failure of the 21st century to think that going into the whole of Ukraine wouldn't be anything more than a tougher version of Crimea. All they'd have to do would be to watch Ukrainian TV and check Ukrainian twitter to get a sense that there wasn't an overwhelming pro-Russian feeling in the country. And they'd surely have people reporting from inside the country to get a feel of what the mood is on the ground. And they wouldn't have been particularly unaware that Ukraine was building its military. There's no intelligence Russia could have been gathering which would suggest that Ukraine would be 'easy'.

And what's more insane is the timing. I find that one really bizarre. The time to go into Ukraine would surely have been in 2018 or 2019 around the time Zelenskyy rose to power and cut that off for a start, and, very, very crucially, Trump was still POTUS, which would have been a better bet of a fragmented response from the West. Weird to wait until a pretty normal U.S. president was back in office, following a fairly orthodox anti-Russia line.

All we need now is for them to run out of vodka and we have them where we need them

Well it's the last place anyone would be looking for him :)

I can't see the US sending in an elite squad of killer drag queens.

Is there anyone in the Kremlin who would do the world a favour and arrange an "accident" for Putin?

Tell me more about this quaint little tactical nuke and what impact it would have on the target.

Not before it becomes clear to the population that Russia is losing the war.

Ah here if you believe that 70 percent figure I have some magic beans I could sell you. When the Russian soldier deaths pile up and the economic sanctions kick in let's see.

Putin is obviously no longer a rational actor, the Russian playbook is escalate to deescalate , hence his use of Thermobaric weapons when normal conventional weapons were not having the desired effect, now atrocity after atrocity in order to soften the world for whats coming, the ultimate sacrifice of Ukraine, millions will die and the west might step up then, unfortunately too late!

Surely if he is escalating to de escalate he would take credit for the nuke if he's planning on using it?

Why would he say the Ukrainians nuked themselves, what the next logical step after that?

It's looking that Way , closet neighbor who happened to be in Americas goods books ,they could leverage the idea of putting a few batteries of Interceptor back on the table that Obama didn't want to go through with ,