Posts by casualcrane20

Lisa Jackson7 said:Who's "all"?

You talk, I act. I've sliced up every single Russian mandarin orange in my kitchen and burned every Russian book I own. Alright, let's see what you have to say to that.

Larry Sanchez7 said:In Luhansk and Donetsk, Ukrainians were actually the majority back then.

And don't even get me started on Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

So you'd just hand those regions over to Russia and then expect Ukraine to sign some deal promising they won't join NATO? They’ll make that promise "tomorrow," which basically means never, especially not given how things are looking right now...

Hold on a second—who exactly is giving anything away here? It’s pretty obvious that the Russians are just seizing it all (or trying to) without asking anyone's permission.
Between the empty, infantile cheering and the constant whining, this forum has started to feel like a cheap, inverted knockoff of the boards you see in neighboring countries. The moment someone dares to present actual facts from the ground that don't align with the "party line," they’re immediately branded an enemy of the state. Right now, what we actually need is some serious, deep-dive analysis regarding future global shifts. If we don't get our act together, we risk being left completely defenseless—much like the rest of the European Union seems to be heading.

placidtiger142 said:I mean, I hope they’ve got momentum. I’m convinced what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks was just the warm-up act.

Real heavy hitters are waiting in the wings, gearing up even bigger and better, but here’s the thing—and this is a massive issue in my book—once they take that ground, from the perspective of Russia, that territory becomes Russian soil again. By the end of the month, if they reclaim it, Russia is gonna see it as an actual invasion of their own country, which is a whole different beast than what's happening right now. I'm just saying, that's how they'll see it.

It doesn't matter to us because obviously it's still Ukraine, but damn, it's not the same thing hitting Russians while they're on foreign dirt versus tomorrow when they're fighting on their own turf, you know?

I don't think it looks unlikely anymore that they'll just bail. The West might just sell out Ukraine if it means they don't have to risk themselves.

They could pull that classic move later on where they say, "Hey, we gave you the weapons, we dumped billions at you, and sure, we'll throw a little more at you for rebuilding," and then—poof—they leave them high and dry.

There's a tricky inequality at play here. The West—specifically the U.S. administration—can afford to regret a failure in Ukraine, even if it comes with consequences. Putin & Co cannot. That's why I worry their fingers are hovering nervously over the button; they won't back down without using every tool they claim they aren't prepared to deploy.

placidtiger142 said:Honestly, I’m just as terrified as anyone else that Putin will actually pull this off and keep whatever territories he claims to have "annexed."

He’ll probably just flood those areas with a million armed people over the next year, basically turning them into a massive, permanent presence on the ground.

Once they officially annex it—by their own rules, anyway—they’re going to start screaming for "de-escalation." They'll try to play the peacemaker, and half the world will probably jump at it just because they're sick of hearing about the war.

In the end, Ukraine could get totally played and lose everything Russia is trying to grab right now.

I mean, seriously, I don't see any realistic way for those lands to actually be returned to the Ukrainians...

Maybe in some other war ten or twenty years down the line that the Ukrainians have to start themselves.

We'll know what's really happening in the next few weeks.

Putin is definitely playing the card where he paints himself as the big winner by declaring these spots part of Russia and then calling a halt to the fighting.

At the end of the day, if he pulls this off like he did with Crimea, the Russians are going to think he's some kind of god.

True, but that assumes Russia can survive those sanctions and isolation without being completely crippled.

Lisa Patel4 said:I haven't wanted to chime in until now, but I'm curious about the general consensus here.

To me, this smells like a backroom deal. The West has been hinting repeatedly that Putin needs a way out. I guess some of you don't realize that the West doesn't mess around with coups or assassinations. Say they kill Putin—what then? Is there any guarantee Dmitry Medvedev won't just order Armageddon?

The Russians have shown themselves to be incompetent amateurs in this war. They've been totally humiliated. I’m not talking about morality or international law here—let's be real, the big powers don't give a damn about those anyway. Russian power was built on the concept of brute force, and now we see that force is seriously shaken.

Russia has screwed itself over long-term. Geopolitically speaking, they've turned Ukraine into a permanent, mortal enemy. They basically unified them as a nation.

My take is that nobody really wins in the end. Russia will likely annex those four regions, making it five including Crimea. They'll grab about a fifth of Ukraine, maybe 120,000 square kilometers. That's a massive chunk. To make matters worse for Ukraine, that's the economic heart of the country. It means losing access to the Sea of Azov for good.

NATO can say whatever it wants, but they won't act directly. Officially, they won't recognize the annexation, but everyone will know that once Russia takes it, it stays theirs. However, Russia has proven itself incapable. They might try to push further, but I doubt they'll take Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, or Mykolaiv... mostly because the population in the areas they actually annex is largely pro-Russian. I don't see a way for Ukraine to ever get that territory back.

Honestly, if it ends there, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia. They'd gain something, but effectively gain nothing. They wouldn't achieve their actual goals—they won't reach Transnistria, they won't get rid of the current leadership, and they won't erase Ukraine from the map. Putin would spin it as a win to justify the war, but he'd be left with a hostile neighbor right on his border.

Total victory scenarios are unrealistic. Whether it's a Ukrainian victory where everything is returned, or a Russian one where Ukraine is wiped out.

If I play Nostradamus:
After September 28th, when Putin gives his speech to the Duma and formally absorbs the four regions into the USA [Note: context implies the Russian Federation], Ukraine will attempt one more major offensive toward Kherson. It'll fail. The Russians will try to retake Kharkiv and head toward Odesa, where they'll suffer a disaster. Internal pressure on both sides will start ramping up. The front lines will stabilize. Russia will face increasing pressure from China and India to wrap it up. In the EU, winter will cause some governments to fall. Support for Ukraine will dwindle as inflation crushes living standards.

Sometime around March 2023, we'll see a ceasefire and a truce. At the peace talks, Ukraine will demand all its territory back, which they won't get. Russia will demand demilitarization, which they won't get either. Some sort of agreement will be signed that looks like a mix of the Korean scenario and Versailles. Both sides will be generally dissatisfied.

Ukraine will commit to not joining NATO, but they'll become the most militarized nation in the world in the coming years. Putin will declare victory, even though various factions will tear him apart for starting such a war for such tiny, almost non-existent gains. Ukraine, meanwhile, will remain a permanently frustrated state, missing a huge portion of its land.

In my opinion, it'll be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia. A very hollow one, and highly questionable in the long run. I wouldn't be surprised if Putin later forces Lukashenko to formally join Russia.

But if—and I stress 'IF'—Putin’s assessment is actually correct, and the West has been orchestrating this entire Ukraine situation since 2014 just to drag Russia into a war to force a collapse similar to the old USSR, then this whole scenario is basically Russia trying to "save what can still be saved." In that case, you tell me whose "pyrrhic victory" we're really talking about here.

Thomas Nelson25 said:So, what's the move?

There are three possible scenarios—though calling them "solutions" is a stretch since the outcomes are anyone's guess:

- Continuing this grind until someone finally snaps,
- Getting NATO involved,
- A peace conference.

Then again, there's always that one wildcard: someone actually removes Putin and his inner circle. Or perhaps they'll come up with something else entirely.

Noah Sanchez2 said:It isn't quite that simple. If you kill the excitation, sure, the generators spin freely like you said, but you lose the load. For instance, if you have a 500MW generator, it needs a turbine capable of maybe 550MW (accounting for losses, these are just rough numbers), and that turbine needs steam at specific pressures and temperatures—say, delivering about 600MW of energy from the reactor to the turbine. Here's the catch: if you cut the excitation and the generator starts spinning idle, you still have 600MW of energy sitting in that superheated steam. That massive amount of energy has to go somewhere; it doesn't just vanish. You can't shut down a nuclear plant (or a coal or gas plant) just by flipping an "electrical" switch. You shut them down from the source where the energy is actually produced—by reducing the fuel consumption in a boiler or, in a nuclear plant, by inserting control rods made of boron steel to soak up free electrons and stop the fission process. Once thermal production drops, the steam pressure and temperature drop, the turbine slows down, the generator slows down, and eventually, the whole system settles enough to safely cut the excitation.

In the event of a major system failure, the generator does get disconnected immediately (excitation is cut and it's isolated from the grid), but at that exact same moment, all that superheated steam has to be vented into the atmosphere. It’s a deafening, violent event—something I've witnessed firsthand several times. Simultaneously, you have to cut the fuel to the boiler or, in a nuclear scenario, rapidly drop those control rods to halt fission while cooling systems kick in to bring the reactor temperature down over several days.

So, shutting down a standard fossil fuel plant is a complex operation, and with nuclear, the process is even more dangerous and significantly more complicated.

Yes, that's essentially how it works; in any case, a sudden shutdown carries a heavy risk of catastrophe.

steelheron25 said:A nuclear plant isn't exactly a light switch you can just flick off, is it? Even when a reactor is "shut down," you still have to keep cooling it for a very long time. And to maintain that cooling, you need electricity, which means you simply cannot detach it from the grid. Diesel generators are a last resort and have extremely limited capacity, especially for a massive facility like this—one with six reactors (by comparison, a site like the one near the Crater might only have one).
Similarly, you can't just plug it into a different grid; you need somewhere to send all that immense power being generated by so many reactors. If the only transmission lines available run toward Crimea and Russia, that's almost certainly nowhere near enough capacity.
Furthermore, the energy demands in Crimea are likely far too low to absorb everything that plant produces; they’d probably need to reroute the power into the Russian grid, assuming such transmission lines even exist in the first place. The plant and its surrounding infrastructure were designed specifically to feed the Ukrainian grid, not to export electricity to Russia, 186 miles let alone anything further afield.
There is no doubt that the long-term goal for the Russians is to divert power from the plant toward Crimea and into Russia, but achieving that requires an enormous amount of complex rerouting and switching. And how on earth are they supposed to pull all that off in the middle of a war zone while shells are flying everywhere?

It is madness, undeniably. However, I suspect the actual danger might be less severe than it appears at first glance. The reactors themselves are heavily fortified within concrete containment structures, and it would take quite a few direct hits to actually breach them. Besides, I assume the objective isn't to blow the reactors sky-high, but rather to disrupt operations and effectively force the plant to remain tied to the Ukrainian electrical system.

A reactor doesn't actually produce electricity; it produces steam to spin turbines. So, technically, stopping power production isn't the issue—you could just disconnect the windings, letting the turbines and generators spin idle. Then again, that's just my layman's take; an actual engineer could probably explain it better.

Carl Lee27 said:Monuments to the occupiers are coming down fast across Eastern Europe
https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas/stat...05460234752002
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/statu...02547282550786
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/statu...77218472116225

This just gives Putin more ammunition. Now they can go ahead and erect monuments to their own Nazis who died fighting the Red Army.

Justin Mendoza16 said:😵😵😵 what absolute idiots...

These morons don't even get it yet. By invading Ukraine, they basically built themselves an iron curtain right on the border that's gonna stay there for at least the next 100 years. They’re gonna get kicked out of Ukrainian territory, period. Plus, those sanctions? They're gonna absolutely wreck their economy and lifestyle for years to come...

🙂I was reading this in the news yesterday, can't remember if it was the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal...

Foreign companies in Russia make up about 12% of the workforce.
The fallout from them leaving is huge—economic activity is tanking, and we're talking over a thousand companies that account for roughly 40% of the Russian GDP.

In that same publication, specifically in the WSJ, you see this:

"THE 'MAGICIANS' OF THE KREMLIN
Why hasn't Russia's economy collapsed yet? These three factors explain how Putin prevented a total meltdown."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-russia-economy-hasn-t-collapsed-yet-15239041
where those three reasons are explained.

Nancy Gomez26 said:And in what way, according to you, would elections in a place like America fail to be free?

Between those shady Vatican agreements pulling in about four percent, the diaspora adding another four, and an entire army of Republican cronies and their newly minted defenders acting as political shields, it’s laughable to keep chanting that these elections are actually free. We're done here; there's nothing left to say.

rowdytiger13 said:Free, multi-party elections. "Free" is the operative word here.
In a country where the opposition is strictly managed and anyone else is branded a foreign agent and thrown in jail, that kind of thing simply doesn't exist.
Putin would be better off just declaring himself president for life like Xi Jinping and stopping this whole charade.

Under capitalism, elections might be multi-party, but they aren't exactly free.

Andrew Booth29 said:Fifty-four years ago, the Soviet Union effectively dismantled Czechoslovakia. To this day, the Czech people carry a sense of gratitude for that intervention. In much the same way, I suspect Ukrainians will be remembering Russia’s "brotherly assistance" for a very long time to come.

The Czechs clearly aren't, but I suppose Germans are supposed to be grateful for their own "denazification," right? Or maybe they aren't either.

Melissa Rivera5 said:The whole county-based model would basically be a massive win for Russia.

Come on, don't talk nonsense. What "trap" by the USA? Did the USA attack Ukraine or did Russia?

I mean, the solution to ending the war is just for Putin to pull his troops out. It's pretty simple, really.

This level of debate practically begs for a catchy little slogan, like:
"Same old story, same old song."

Kate Lewis3 said:Not if they manage to reclaim every single inch of territory and finally join NATO.

Well, if you follow "distinguished military analyst" Goran Redžepović, he’s started cooling down those optimistic forecasts regarding chances of reclaiming territory—assuming that "IF" holds any weight at all.

Here is how Redžepović is putting it now:
"Mass mobilization has diluted the quality of command within the Ukrainian forces; liberating Kherson is looking increasingly unlikely."

Arthur Miller7 said:I'm with you on this one.

The first thing those Germans will tell him is: "Hey, where you been, man?"

Jose Clark2 said:Regarding this and similar claims, I don't take anyone's word for it—not one side or the other. Truth is the first casualty in war, as they say. Both sides have motives to spin events for their own benefit, just as they might suffer because of them. Many maneuvers eventually seem illogical or baffling. Deception is common; the psychological aspect of war is often just as vital as the kinetic one. A False flag is a frequent tactic in any conflict. Until an objective investigation proves otherwise, I trust no one.

I completely agree. The further we move away from the daily grind of battlefield reports—which are notoriously unreliable anyway—the better our chances of figuring out who is doing what and why. At the highest geopolitical level, it's obvious we are seeing a global realignment of major powers. Every tactical move on the ground is just a byproduct of that. Since we are talking about existential survival, these players won't hesitate to use methods that other nations would consider unthinkable. They also won't hesitate to frame those actions to make them look justified or acceptable. Plus, with today's tech for manipulating audio and video, it's nearly impossible to judge authenticity on your own. To make matters worse, journalism, which used to be a decent source of info, has become the primary engine for fakes and noise. Ultimately, we have to follow the money and watch social media. On those platforms, the rarest and most aggressive voices are the independents, which includes me. We tend to annoy both sides because we refuse to fit into the narrow version of "truth" they are trying to push.

Christian Torres3 said:Israelists blew up a drone factory meant for the Russians, so of course they aren't happy.

So, will the US and the EU follow up with more sanctions? Or not?

Carl Hernandez3 said:Well
Poland is shifting its stance quite a bit.
They’re actually demanding an apology from Ukraine regarding the 100,000 Poles killed by Banderin's forces during World War II.
It’s funny—they only just decided to bring this up now.

And when else would they bring it up? I’m curious to see if Ukraine is just going to brush them off.

Jose Clark2 said:I get why people are emotionally invested; they see parallels to the wars we had here. There are similarities, sure, but there are differences too.

You're wasting your breath; you aren't exactly some opera star.