Any bets they will agree and then violate it? Nah, too easy.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 05:18 pm: Edit

They can agree, and drag out the negotiations until Trump gets bored and declare everything is going splendid, pull out his team and lift sanctions.

They can refuse, count on Trump getting bored and declaring everything is going splendid, pull out his team and lift sanctions.

Am I unfair to Trump? Besides rooting for the bad guys the WH seems to lack competence. Note they tried to undercut Zelensky by having secret talks with Ukrainian opposition figures Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.
To the Ukrainians amusement they talked to what is cruelly called "has-beens".

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 05:34 pm: Edit

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 05:57 pm: Edit

I haven't seen any reports on what if anything this proposal says about final territorial status.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 07:09 pm: Edit

Carl: Bored?! Really?! The guy has been in for 50 days and has driven both parties to the negotiating table.— more than that other guy who could have prevented it in the first place. A million people have died while Europeans bought billions in energy from Russia while hand-wringing over how much the US must support Ukraine. Pathetic!

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 08:20 pm: Edit

Russia has provided a non-verbal reply to the cease fire proposal: they've launched a major air attack on Kyiv.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 - 08:23 pm: Edit

I highly recommend a YouTube video in which Captain William Toti (USN-Ret) and historian Jon Parshall have a really good discussion about the war in Ukraine. It's on Capt. Toti's YouTube channel. After his retirement, Capt. Toti did work in both Ukraine and Russia in the 2,000s, giving him some very interesting insights.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 - 07:08 am: Edit

Well, the collision between the Cargo Ship and Tanker (Carrying US Military Aviation Fuel) on Monday in the North Sea has been made more interesting.

It seems the Portuguese Flagged Cargo Ship's Captain was Russian.

Was it a deliberate collision rather than an accident?

How come the rest of the Cargo Ship Crew allowed it (which the rest of the crew was multi-national) to happen?

It might explain though why a moving ship with radar etc hit a stationary ship....

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 - 07:54 am: Edit

Particularly when the stationary ship (Stena Immaculate) was a U.S. flagged tanker moving jet fuel for the Defense Logistics Agency. And the Solong was making 16 knots...through an anchorage, where the normal limit is 5 knots.

As a note, the crew of the Solong was comprised of Russian and Filipino nationals.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 - 09:57 am: Edit

Chuck, you are right. That was a poor choice of word. 'Patience' is better, and yet I may find myself be wrong about Trump on that matter.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 - 07:15 pm: Edit

Associated Press reported that the. Captain of the freighter that rammed the DOD tanker has been arrested.

Appearance aside, the Ships owners are running to every media outlet, station and reporter they can reach to make sure the world knows the captain of the ramming ship is Russian.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 - 10:03 pm: Edit

I am not sure if I can back Jessica's plan, even if I like her plan.

1. There is no certainty that Russia will crack. I think Ukraine would crack first.

2. Rolling the dice every day on a nuclear war.

3. Need the Grafton Corollary to prevent corruption, and even that doesn't stop selling the weapons, food, and other supplies on the black market, which apparently has happened.

4. I would have to see Europe chip in more money and more stuff. A lot more.

5. Europe would have to forgive the loans it gave Ukraine, or we'd have to turn our support into loans, at least going forward.

6. I still want some kind of resources deal to pay for the expense.

7. I am not convinced that any victory will happen. You cannot announce the two-year deadline or Russia will just hang on until we give them Ukraine. And two years (and $200 billion) from now we'll be back in the same place with Jessica asking for two more years and another $200 billion.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 07:53 am: Edit

5. The loans to Ukraine are not proper loans, more like an indirect way to confiscation, or compensation. After all they have frozen russian central bank assets as collateral.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 09:55 am: Edit

Regarding item #7: to be clear, I wouldn't be announcing any form of a deadline. Doing so in war is always folly. Rather, I'd maintain support until Putin's Russia suffers sufficient economic collapse to see Putin removed by rank-and-file Russians.

As for item #3, nearly all aid provided to Ukraine is in the form of munitions and material, not cash, and that's exactly as it should be. Will some of it make its way to black markets? Of course; there's never been a war where that hasn't happened, including at the hands of U.S. Army quartermasters. But the amount that does so is no where near what certain rumormongers claim it is.

On item #2, I'm of the opinion that Russia's nuclear stockpile is largely non-functional. Why? A few reasons, which I'll describe below.

The tritium core for Russian nuclear warheads is good for about a decade before it has to be replaced. But of the two Russian facilities that could produce those cores, one has been shut down for decades, and the other is running at such a low level that it could not come close to meeting even a small portion of the required replenishment cycle for Russia's stockpile.

Meanwhile, Putin has drawn half a dozen or more "red lines" beyond which a nuclear response was threatened, and Ukraine and the West have called every one of those bluffs without a mushroom cloud to be seen.

And that brings us to last September, when Ukraine managed a massive drone attack on Moscow and Russia did not reduce Kyiv to a glowing crater. As Ukraine isn't a NATO member and has no treaty with any nuclear power that would grant a retaliatory nuclear strike if nuclear arms were used against Kyiv, there's frankly no reason for Moscow not to do so...if their weapons still worked.

I suspect that Russia's nuclear arsenal fell victim to the same thing its military vehicles did: gross theft at every level that diverted nearly all funds for maintenance elsewhere. We saw it at the start of the war in Ukraine, when Russian front-line vehicles were seen with lubricant streaming down from their hubs because the seals had long-since rotted out.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 10:34 am: Edit

Tritium is also easy to convert to money; it is used to make "night dots" for guns. I have one on my High Power.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 10:39 am: Edit

I say for each shipment to Ukraine, the U.S. takes one Ukrainian Billionaire and hold him/her as collateral/hostage....

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 11:43 am: Edit

Bolo: there's only two Ukrainian billionaires at this point, these being Rinat Akhmetov ($6.59 billion) and Viktor Pinchuk ($1.72 billion). Beyond that, by and large, demanding hostages in exchange for assistance to an ally is something that went out of vogue in the Renaissance.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 11:45 am: Edit

Russia has (unsurprisingly) now formally rejected the cease fire proposal.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 11:47 am: Edit

I doubt there are all that many Ukrainian billionairs compared to the number of weapon's shipments needed to fight a war. Holding them hostage isn't really an option.

I also doubt that the Russian nukes are entirely useless. The tritium is almost certainly mostly decayed to He3 in the vast majority, but our own "dial a yield" bombs can be set to 0% of the tritium being injected and they will still go boom, just a much smaller boom (0.3 kilotons). Tritium injection makes the blast more powerful, but you still need a critical mass even with tritium, and that critical mass will still go boom even without tritium.

If the Russians really wanted to nuke Kiev, they could presumably do so and simply claim that the modest size of the explosion was from humanitarian concerns or to allow precise targetting. 0.3 kilotons (which may be off slightly from the Russion's current bomb yields) is still 300 tonnes, and the MOAB fuel air bomb (our biggest conventional blast) is only 11 tonnes equivalent. A 300 ton equivalent blast in the center of a city will do a lot of damage.

Of course, Russia is downwind from Kiev, and this would be a dirty blast.

All that said, I'd still be aiding Ukraine if it were my choice, and I see no reason to trust a Russian ceasefire.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 11:59 am: Edit

I think the average person will say they never want to see any nation do 2.

Even a failed bomb could make a mess of a huge area*.

* - Noting the US and Australia might say, oops that was a shame.... but Europe, Asia and Africa might be the ones to suffer.


Clearly - the Ceasefire will be tweaked and both sides will say OK (Ukraine because they are told do so and Russia because they will be left in a stronger position).

No replacement arms shipped in for either side for example, probably benefits the Russians more?

(Nothing to stop the Russians servicing old ammo etc in the Far East.....)

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 12:52 pm: Edit

Another thing about fallout; studies of wild animals across Scandinavia in the aftermath of the Chernobyl meltdown showed that they were showing signs of heightened levels of radiation.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 03:50 pm: Edit

Jessica wrote:

My plan would be to double down on support for Ukraine, and bleed the Russian economy dry.

This is the correct approach. Problem is it hasn't been sufficiently tried. Russia is dependent on hydrocarbons. Ukrainian drones already routinely cause large fires at Russian oil refineries. The frequency of this needs to be increased until Russian repairs cannot keep up. Then they will have a gasoline shortage.

Russian oil pipelines depend on their pumping stations. These can and should be knocked out. Ukraine has already attacked and damaged these stations, too. If the rate of damage can exceed the rate at which Russia can perform repairs, then Russia can no longer pipeline its crude to ports for export.

Natural gas also depends on pipelines and processing plants. Ukraine has been causing large fires at the processing plants.

Ruined hydrocarbon industry => no money for Russia => no war.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 04:09 pm: Edit

Or maybe...

Ruined hydrocarbon industry => no money for Russia => nuclear war.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 05:47 pm: Edit

Highly unlikely, for a host of reasons. Suppose you are in whatever position in Russia. You obey Putin because if you don't, he might kill you.

But if he orders you to start a nuclear war, your calculus changes. If you don't obey, he might kill you. If you do obey, all Russia might be killed.

On top of that, it is unknown to what extent Russia's nuclear arsenal even works. It is mostly 20th century Soviet technology. That doesn't have a good record in other areas.

Furthermore, Russia currently produces little to no tritium gas.

The US says China has told them not to even think about it.

Furthermore, this "nuclear war" business is taken straight out of Russian information warfare. Seriously. Once I was on a social medium, arguing with a "person" that I later found out was a Russian bot. It would threaten nuclear war over this or that.

Lastly, not defeating Russia also risks nuclear war coming from their next outrage.

Upshot, they can and must be defeated.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 05:59 pm: Edit

If they start nuclear war because they run out of money they would be totally unpredictable. We would be at risk if putins gerbil died.