Ukraine

[CharlesHarris]

Looks like things are heating up, embassy staff are being recalled and sent home ....UK and USA ....amongst others ? .......not going well is it ? .....time to send in joe Biden to sort the mess out ! Only he who has superhuman powers will be up to the challenge and slay Ivan ! I have every confidence joe will make stuff happen !
........god help us all .

What we know is that RU deployment occurred after significant violence against ethnic Russians in the eastern province. It was billed as a defensive deployment to keep Kiev forces out of Russia. Those divisions have done nothing offensive in two and a half months while diplomats talk. Certainly Russian SF and paramilitary units are supporting the separatists with intel, logistics, and advisors. Par for the course.

Taking all this at face value with only open source reporting one can conclude that RU has no immediate plans for invasion. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the remaining 6 weeks of good cross country mobility weather. They just need the right pretext.

By analogy to Desert Shield/Storm. It takes a minute to get logistics in place for a Combined Arms Front to maneuver. That’s likely done now. Diplomatic shenanigans provide political cover. Putin knows that Biden is not up to the job and is likely to do something dumb because Ukraine has lots of Compromat on Biden, Inc. Burisma is likely only the tip of the iceberg. So Putin will poke and prod until Biden does something dumb and clears the way to liberate the ethnic Russians east of the Dnepier River. Same thing we did in Kuwait. At least that’s one way to look at it. We made some pretty outrageous demands of Saddam too.

I’m betting 70/30 on a war, started by Kiev. The first major indicator was our sending Javelin AT missiles. Now I’m seeing news reports of troop deployment from a Brigade to a Corps. Haven’t asked any of the boys what they’re working on and they should not say anyway. I would look at stocks of major defense companies and petroleum futures to see what the market thinks.

As our 44th President said, never underestimate Joe’s ability to screw things up.

I hate to see us get in another tussle wasting blood and treasure. Timing isn’t ideal.