"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

How?

Send Trump to keep him company.

Or, command his Army.

Cut off Russia's supplies of blue jeans and cassette tapes. And don't release the new Batman movie there (but still release Avatar 2 - in fact, only release Avatar 2 in Russia and nowhere else).

This is why you don't normalise dictatorships, people.

Well, at least by not uttering statements like "Russia is just concerned about its border security" like he's NOT a land-grabbing dictator who has people in Western nations poisoned.

Next up, freeze any Russian accounts in the West larger than £200K.

I issued no such statement.

I said that expanding NATO into Ukraine was always going to be a likely spark to light the bonfire.

And here we are.

Nor did I say YOU did - but it's an extension of some of what you did say. And there are a lot of people in powerful positions in the West making just that extension.

Off the top of my head.....

Bomb this shit out of all airports in Ukraine so the Russians can't use them

Expel all Russians everywhere around the world from everything, deport them back to the shithole they came from

No Russian participation in any type of international sporting competition

Poison key officials in Putin's government - Shoygu, Manturov, a couple of their Deputy Prime Ministers

Crippling sanctions - nothing goes in and nothing comes out of Russia

Make it literally impossible for Putin to leave his country (maybe bomb the shit out of Sochi while you're at it, that's supposedly his favorite spot)

An extension reached only by ironing out the nuance and making policy statements in a format suitable for twitter.

I don't object to people taking that stance however because we aren't a mob. We have the freedom and responsibility to question not only the decisions of our leaders but also the assumptions and narratives underlying them.

Our counterparts in Russia do necessarily have those freedoms, let's not dismiss the significance of that.

So bomb the airports the Russians are already bombing, starve the innocent Russian people and start WW3 in earnest?

Come on you can do better than that.

"Let's play Global Thermonuclear War"

They're taking them over so they can more efficiently supply their invasion

Already starving for the most part

Maybe, maybe not. So I guess I'd take back the bombing Sochi part

I'm just spitballing here - what would you do?

One of two options, neither of which I like.

1. Make the Polish border our line in the sand and have rapid response forces near to but not actually on the border with main battle forces available deeper. Maintain efforts at diplomacy and keep Russian diplomats working.

2. Acknowledge we're already at war and keep those airports in Ukranian hands. Secure key areas of the country and be ready for strikes on Russian held territories.

Both suck for different reasons but here we are.

Personally choice 1 is what I'd prefer to settle for, because it stands the better chance of limiting the damage.

Invade Siberia!

Does lightning strike twice?

Make him fight a war on two fronts!

Both Klitschkos?

Season 2 of Chernobyl confirmed.

Might be amusing, and yes I had to look this up.

I hope all Russia invaders end up roasting in hell.

It is like americans do not see oil because it is not the middle east. This is a grift from god for the oil companies. Biden has a huge shadow of corruption over him with Ukranian gas companies.

Conspiracy warning:

Maybe there is a fucking reason Donald Trump will never be prosecuted for his crimes. If there was something going on, he knows it and probably dragged enough proof to Mar-a-lago to shield him from prosecution.

Heard on the NPR today: trump is the only person making a positive comment about Putin in the last 24 hours

I'd post the tweet but there isn't one.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/d...utin-for-russias-ukraine-invasion-11645720539

Am I the only one who remembers recent history here? Member back when Trump bombed a Syrian airfield? It took them less than a week to get the thing back into service. Remember also, that during the Cold War, the Soviets figured that their runways were going to get bombed, so they designed their aircraft to be able to take off from less than optimal runways. I wouldn't be surprised if this was still the case. Essentially, if you want to render an airport unusable, you need to drop a nuke on it. Not something that I'd endorse.

There are possibilities for what we could do that don't involve the entire planet going to war, or starving millions of people, to resolve this. After all, Ukraine wasn't always a part of the USSR/Russia, so they do have a right to be an independent nation (though perhaps with not identical borders prior to those they had in 2000).

1) It seems likely that folks in NATO would have close contact with members of the Russian military, be they spies, or just folks to contact so that the other side knows that nobody's planning a military assault on Russian forces. Drop those folks a little hint that if Pootie-Poot suddenly found himself room temperature, and the new government asked for a cease-fire, not only would it be granted, but the international community would look the other way about any war crimes that might have been committed by Russian forces during the invasion.

2) Presumably, we've got agents in the Kremlin/Moscow, and we tell them that if they go all Gavrilo Princip on Putin's ass, we'll hand over a few billion to their next of kin, or them (should they survive an obvious suicide mission).

3) The heads of state for all the NATO countries get together and agree that one of them (doesn't matter who, just that they have the ability to actually do it), will bomb the fuck out of a place they're 100% certain Pootie Poot is in, with enough firepower to kill that motherfucker. (Not like when we bombed places where we thought Saddam was at the start of the Iraq War, but we pick a time and a place where Pootie Poot's going to be and hit it with something like a MOAB. Like say, he's on his way to inspect the troops or something.) We also agree that once Pootie Poot's out of the picture, we work towards a negotiated peace that doesn't extract a massive penalty against anyone.

I think that what we'll most likely do is try to starve out Pootie Poot and his cronies with sanctions and push for efforts to destabilize his regime from within. Then, when he's toppled, we'll quietly forget about the whole thing and just set ourselves up for a repeat of the same situation in a few years, with a different sociopath at the head of the Russian government.

Also, has anyone checked in on Dayton? What with him being a diabetic and on dialysis, the protein and fluid loss he must be suffering over the prospect of the US engaging in an all-out war with Russia must be giving him a raging boner like a 13-year-old who's snagged some of his grandpappy's Viagra.

At the very least, he's got to be on the phone to his daughter demanding that she immediately enlist in the military, in hopes that she makes it out of boot camp in time to die in glorious battle against the Russians.

Liar.