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

Breaking: Dayton Kitchens reportedly hospitalized due to extreme protein loss and dehydration.

Fuck the White House staffers and fart-sniffers for trying to walk back the President's remarks.

Biden is 100% correct. Putin is a threat to global peace and cannot remain in power.

Well, sure, but you can't commit to that out loud or you'll limit your own tactics and strategy as well as Putin's.

A lot of not-going-to-war consists of pretending that X and Y will happily settle for less than seeing each other eviscerated.

It's not often you see pics of the officer carrying the "Football."

We call them "Cope Cages".

Russians are fucking barbarian criminals.

Tandem warheads like Javelin has were designed to defeat ERA, so it's no surprise that slat armor does nothing.

It's reminiscent of T-34s in Berlin with bedsprings welded to their turrets to try to defend against panzerfausts.

Legit Slat Armor (which this definitely is not) can be effective against RPG-7s but yeah, good luck against a Javelin or AT-4.

I'm actually curious to know, would 105mm armed vehicles like the Leopard 1A5, or the M60A3 have much success against T-72B's, or T-80's? I saw a BTR-4 kill a T-72B Obr 2016 with a shit ton of flank shots with it's 30mm Autocannon.

Flank and rear shots shouldn't be a problem for 105mm. The hull sides are 60-80mm at most.

M900-series sabot would have a decent shot at defeating Russian frontal armor as well.


In 2003 there was at least one knife fight engagement between Bradleys and Iraqi T-72s where the IFVs were too close to use TOWs so they mobility-killed the tanks by firing 25mm DU rounds into the rear hulls, disabling the engines. The Iraqis bailed out and were killed or captured.

Demanding regime change significantly narrows the potential of a negotiated peace. That was not a good move, and highlights the possibility that Ukraine is being used as a pawn in a geopolitical game.

Okay, Chamberlain.

You understand that the US will not be in any peace conference, as it's not a party to the conflict, right?

I don't know enough about PR and public opinion to know if coming out and saying that was the right move, but they will definitely be playing that clip inside Russia as an example of the US is threatened by and wants to interfere with Russia.

For many in Russia (and also China) they literally see Europe as being under US influence in the same way that Russia wants to have it's own sphere of influence in Western Europe. What the US says can be spun to be the motivation for any unified European actions, and also to those who think Zelenskyy is a puppet of NATO it can make Ukraine's fight against Russia be reframed as Russia the evil West.

They're doing that anyway.

Well yeah, hence the first part of my post.

The point was that whether or not the US is officially part of any peace conference is irrelevant as they will be perceived to.

While I agree it wasn't the correct diplomatic move, Russia is already lying about all of those things independently of anything Biden said. He had a moment of honesty in his disgust for Putin. At the end of the day it's only going to matter to people who already were on that side.

The US doesn't control NATO, and Russia's attack on Ukraine was never about NATO. It was about empire building, resources, and securing the Crimean ports.

And that's irrelevant to the truth or any comment Biden makes.

Saying it and then going "oh, noooo, he didn't mean that..." seems like it might be a good way to communicate to Putin just how badly he's fucked up ...

Aren’t sanctions themselves advocating for regime change?

Not necessarily - you could make a strong argument that it's advocating for behaviorial change.

But yeah, at this point most people agree the world would be a better place without Putin.

Unfortunately it's not likely to happen. Instead we will see Russia go the way of North Korea.

Yes, there's no precedent for regime change in Russia.

Two things both Gorbachev and Tsar Nicholas had in common. They both were reformers who got caught up by revolutions that wanted reform faster than they were willing to allow. That's definitely not Putin.

I think if you look at the broader Russian history you'll find most of the dictators and authoritarians were successful in keeping the populace down.

I hope I'm wrong, but most analysts I've read think that there isn't going to be a successful revolution.

Long read but insightful.

Indeed but they clearly wield a lot of influence over what the Ukrainians can offer, and what they can accept. Most obviously in relation to the unwinding of sanctions, but also in relation to NATO, military assistance to Ukraine and so forth.