Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Crossroads]

A "leaked" Kremlin strategy document sets out plans to annex Belarus no later than 2030.

Not certain if I believe that this document is real or not, but it "feels" right.

If true, that makes Lukashenko the proverbial snail crawling on a razors edge.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/revealed-leaked-document-shows-how-russia-plans-to-take-over-belarus/ar-AA17Jsik?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=454ded251abe426497e98a3f49bc256c

There were the official Editorials in various news outlets who congratulated Putin on his historical achievement of bringing Ukraine and Belarus back to Mother Russia, the day after he started his brutal invasion.

He really is in the business of annexing a number of independent countries with war and violence, in 2023. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, ...

Let us see if he's stopped for good here. Or if he is to survive, regroup, and try again. 

[JasonPratt]

One way or another, I don't think Putler will survive to try this again. He's in bad health and getting observably worse. (I doubt he goes near any windows nowadays either.  )

[Sir Slash]

So what do the learned minds here think the response in the West would/should be to China's providing, 'Lethal Assistance' to Putin for his war of Liberation from Nazism and Drug-Addiction in Ukraine, if such assistance occurs?

[GDS_Starfury]

it reduces chicom stockpiles and won't help the russians in the grand scheme of things.  it's also a good excuse for the west giving longer range weapons.

[Skoop]

So what do the learned minds here think the response in the West would/should be to China's providing, 'Lethal Assistance' to Putin for his war of Liberation from Nazism and Drug-Addiction in Ukraine, if such assistance occurs?

I'm game for full cutoff and eco sanctions of China.  I've been wanting to completely sever all ties with China any way, lethal arms to Russia is the perfect reason to make it happen.

[Gusington]

^How can we completely sever ties with China when they manufacture most of what we use every day?

[Windigo]

Yeah.  The ATACMS is the next step up in terms of ordinance for the HIMARS.  But it's unclear how many of them we have, much less how many we'd be willing to share with the Ukrainians.

The replacements for the ATACMS might be coming out sometime this year, or they might not.  The glacial pace of weapons production in the US seems a little confounding to me.  Not that it takes a while to ramp up manufacturing capacity, but that we only seemed to notice this problem starting a couple months ago...

Actually there is one between standard HIMARS rocket and ATACMs.  It's the GLSDB with a range of about 150 km (about double the standard HIMARS 80).  It was supposedly included in latest shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20230209.aspx

I recall reading that too.  Just waiting for the Russians to notice when unprotected stuff way behind the line
starts to go boom.

[Windigo]

^How can we completely sever ties with China when they manufacture most of what we use every day?

Don't try and be a voice of reason Gussy. Not here! We dont need no stinking medications and iphones and steel and shit.

[GDS_Starfury]

^How can we completely sever ties with China when they manufacture most of what we use every day?

well we could just make all that shit ourselves again.

[Gusington]

For 20x as much as it costs Chinese slave labor to make :/

[JasonPratt]

I suspect if we gave up our addiction to slave labor elsewhere, we might be motivated to get our economy under control here. Be that as it may -- it's only a suspicion, I'm certainly not an economist.

Don't try and be a voice of reason Gussy. Not here! We dont need no stinking medications and iphones and steel and shit.

Can we buy medications somewhere without Fentanyl spikes? That would be nice.

[al_infierno]

^How can we completely sever ties with China when they manufacture most of what we use every day?

well we could just make all that shit ourselves again.

The word "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence ;)

[Groggy]

^How can we completely sever ties with China when they manufacture most of what we use every day?

well we could just make all that shit ourselves again.

Biden signing the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 started us down the path...

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, speaking of making things or not making things as the case may be:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/118jfkl/prigozhins_drama_continues_russian_mod_in_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

This seems to bode well?

[GDS_Starfury]

this tangent is another whole thread by itself.