When you've lost the initiative and are fighting defensively, you need time to regroup much more that the person on offense with initiative. That's pretty basic. If Russia were on the offensive, they would not be calling for a cease-fire.
Probably both played a part, as well as other concerns.
I agree.
www.the-sun.com
They don't have the equipment to put all these new recruits into a new set of boots, give them basic gear and that says nothing about their ammo, arms and training.Not good….
Putin readying ‘700k troops for new offensive in weeks to cut off Ukraine'
RUSSIA is allegedly preparing for a new offensive that could see 700,000 soldiers pour into Ukraine. Ukraine has been warning over the winter that Vladimir Putin’s forces will be gearing up f…
www.theatlantic.com
The single biggest threat, and I think this is a bigger threat than we want to believe, is Putin and his nukes. I think he could be pushed far enough to use one, I really do. I know that MAD is the deterrent, but I could see him betting that we won't retaliate for the very same reason. If he got a wild hair and nuked Berlin, that would be devastating, and frankly I am not sure we would retaliate as no one wants a global nuclear war, which is what that would precipitate. I think he knows this and would be willing to use one nuke to "send a message", and bet that we would not retaliate in kind because we want to avoid the fall-out from that even more.
www.mirror.co.uk
Even if we didn't retaliate I think the world would be so mad at putin that they would be ostracized to a degree that would devastate them.
Yeah I think the retaliation would end up being economic, or in some other way damaging to Russia, but I doubt we would respond with a nuke in kind. That would open it up for Putin to go ham on nukes and we would have no choice but to respond in kind at that point. I really don't know what the best response would be if Putin wiped out Berlin. I could see us entering into a conventional war, like in Ukraine right now, but then will Putin just continue with nukes? I don't know, hard to guess where that would go, but I honestly do not think it is outside of the realm of possibility for what Putin is capable of. I would not be surprised to hear that a bunch of his advisors are restraining him right now, especially with the tanks on the way to Ukraine.
If he nuked Berlin, or Paris (altho I agree Berlin is more likely) or London or anything outside of Ukraine, we would destroy him, period. That would bring the full force and fury of NATO down. Would we respond with more nukes? I wouldn't rule it out. If it was inside Ukraine, that's a bit more iffy, because, obviously, they are not part of NATO.
I like the thought that they don't have any more, but I really doubt it. I am sure they have enough to cause pretty substantial devastation.
www.theguardian.com
Because we paid for and had oversight on the construction of the facilities where the Russian nukes were stored. The United States was very concerned that as the former Soviet Union collapsed that nukes would wander off so we rushed in with nearly half a billion dollars via the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction and specifically the Nuclear Weapons Storage Security Program (NWSS). We know they have some nukes left because they were in our buildings in Russia.
We've done economic sanctions to greater than 90% of what can be done. Economic sanctions are wet trash. They have never stopped anyone from doing anything as far as I can tell. They also hurt the most vulnerable the most.
I dunno, I think Putin is pretty efficiently taking out anyone who even thinks anything against him. This article is from September, I think there are more recent examples as well.
www.euronews.com
