Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Anders Puck Nielsen" channel.

  1. Or maybe they just prefer death to dishonor.
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  2. Two sides calling each calling other fascist. Both convinced they are right.
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  3. Russia's standing, or willingness to stand alone depends on what Russians think, not Westerners. @justmy-profilename 
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  4. Maybe, but countries that lose wars also start new ones. Germany WW1 & 2 for example.
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  5. He is a naval guy and this is a Makinder war
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  6.  @mrbrumby3409  First use against a nuclear armed country in a conventional war is the Rubicon that has never been crossed. America cannot support Ukraine while it quietly builds and uses a nuclear weapon on Russia and then act all shocked. whatever Anders may imply. Especially mow it is already being openly discussed on YT for goodness sake. There is also the point that Ukraine would suffer unlimited devastation if it used a nuclear weapon on Russia, and the Ukrainians who issued and obeyed such on order would have to answer for what they had done to their own countryman. and their families.
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  7.  @migBdk  Emptying its junkpiles more like; that stuff would have been corroded into inoperability in a few years.
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  8. I have my doubts about whether Putin's every move is done with the intention of trying to influence the West
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  9.  @Truth4thetrue  Prigozhin's military empre was growing too big and the army was going to take it over. That, and Prigozhin ,being coked out of his skull, was why he revolted
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  10.  @xavierg8985  Know one really know, but I THINK Russia has the advantage in attritional warfare. Ukrainian are going to have an open door to the west, where refugees form a diaspora that will lower the cost of emigrating West and their country had even worse demographic woes than Russia anyway.
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  11. I don't think it is obvious that any defence experts think Ukraine can win without a truly massive donation of near state of the art US weapons, because Russia can amping up its own arms production quite a bit yet. Ukraine and its supporters do not want to let on about that and prefer to implicitly suggest that just a little more will work. What Johnson seems to be asking is the same questions as, at the inflection point of Vietnam, Clark Clifford asked the Joint Chiefs> "what is your plan for winning the war?". Ukraine's plan is to ask for better arms and guaranteed supply of as much of them as needed, whereupon they will decimate the Russian army in Ukraine I don't see the problem with Ukraine telling the US what they would do, were they to to be given everything on their wish list except their with list is so long it is thought better to not ask for it all in one go. The reason they are not given everything on the current explicit wish list is is the Pentagon don't want Ukraine to be given those things because the Pentagon think the war in Ukraine might get out of control and drive Russia to desperate measures were there to an open ended US supply of everything Ukraine needs to win.
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  12. Anders is basically right that Ukraine has to be supported. But Ukraine's interests are not identical to NATOs. Ukraine has the very best of motives to try and get the West far more involved than it is already is or wants to be, We don't know how things actually are with the Russians' will versus their conventional capability. Anders seems to speak as if we can assume their will is relatively fragile and they'll quit long before the conflict threatens the continuation of the current system in Russia. We don't know that. If anything the Kremlin's will appears to be much stronger than their conventional military and economic power. How the Russian leadership would react to a build of of pressure is uncertain . There might be a tipping point where the suddenly flip from rhetoric and decide action as a specimen of what they can do has become necessary.
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  13. When you here about a Ukrainian victory, and listen closely. what the person is really talking about is a Russian collapse due to domestic dissent.
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  14. Russia took Bakhmut, that was not a psychological blow to Ukrainian morale and a huge boost to Russian confidence?
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  15. I don't think the evidence suggests Washington wants a total defeat of the Russian effort in Ukraine.
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  16. Deep down everyone thinks they are more sinned against than sinning. In 2013 the former head of the US National Endowment for Democracy Carl Gershman, , wrote: “Ukraine is the biggest prize" and if it could be pulled away from Russia and into the West, “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” I think the Ukrainian were a trifle hasty in thinking that Putin was going to be scared to take military action. Even after 2014, they thought he could not be serious Anders seems to think that unless Putin agree to subject himself to whatever a Western MSM interviewer wants to subject him too, the West ought to ghost Putin, but he the leader of a poweful country that, whatever you may think, is not going anywhere. He is not in the dock of an international court being cross examined. Insulting attribution, weighted questions, interrupting answers ETC has no downside for the MSM interviewer. The Russians cannot be required to grant interview to those who think Russia owes explanations. 'He is leader of a huge aggressive state angry at what we are doing so lets ignore everything he has been consistently saying. Great thinking Anders.
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  17. America could defeat Russia in Ukraine, I don't think it wants Russia to win or be defeated . Russia is going to be needed to deal with a future megapower China.
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  18.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Russia is still going on about WW2. They are not going to forgive and forget a clear defeat in Ukraine. America is not seriously trying to help Russia win; the US could donate an order of magnitude more if it really wanted to.
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  19. ​ @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Russians are obsessed with a victory in WW2. They are hardly going to be able to just forget about a defeat in Ukraine largely down to America, eh?. And the Kremlin would become much ,much closer to China than Washington is comfortable with in the aftermath of a defeat in Ukraine. Washington has to let the Russians achieve a limited victory or draw. Really beating them in Ukraine is not an American objective.
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  20. A reasonable expectation based on the the last twelve months of the war is for the foreseeable future the Russians will fight stubbornly if not skillfully, and they are not intending to mount their own major offensive.
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  21. They (or rather the politicians in charge back then) renounced forever more Ukraine having nukes in return for money (much of it paid by Germany). Ukraine did get "assurances" but at the insistence of the US the agreement explicitly stated that there was no guarantees being given to Ukraine. This caveat was not 'small print it was made quite a thing of. The money was the sticking point the Ukrainians held out for more and signed when Germany provided it.
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  22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnm351D9wkE
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  23. Israelis did not like him comparing Ukrainians to Jews in WW2.
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  24.  @SuezWSuezW  Israel is a jealous god. Meaning Ukraine can't get what Israel has by way of US support; there is not enough of it to go around. Ukraine wanted to become Poland, now it wants to be Israel. Which country next?
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  25.  @SuezWSuezW  They would not be talking about it, except to say they would not dream of building one if one if they were building one. Russia has them too so it would be a Mexican standoff in a nuclear sense. IMO Zelensky is trying a ploy to get the US to increase i the quantity and quality of its conventional support.
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  26. Those who voted for Trump did so in order to have better lives, and so the US president does not want to bankroll Ukraine any more. The Nato countries likely could, at a pinch, supply Ukraine with the wherewithal to defeat Russia and give security to Ukraine; that is not the problem it's how how to pay for it without negatively impacting their own economies and investing for the future of their peoples. The money for social spending in Europe without raising taxes has been coming out of defence budgets for decades (especially in Britain). European countries suffering from chronic low growth have now been joined by Germany. Some supporters of Ukraine talk as if there there is an inexhaustible, eternal mountain of surplus money to draw on. Whatever happens Ukraine will be an ongoing drain on European finances
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  27. I don't think the value to each side was equal; the Russians thought they could not leave Ukraine in possession of Bakhmut as it would expose a weak part ofthe Russian held territory to attack, but Ukraine could have used a economy of force fighting retreat in the second stage of the battle because Russia could not continue advancing after taking Bakhmut.
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  28. Do something America would surely would feel impelled to, yet it is not a combatant in the war, suddenly taking actual military action directly against Russia would be a bigger escalation than Putin using a theatre thermonuclear weapon In a war Russia is has been losing for many month and has already had by his own admission several thousands KIA in. In a situation where America is retaliating for a strike on Ukraine, Russia has already crossed the Rubicon, so it is barely plausible that after detonating one theatre thermonuclear weapon Russians are going to accept that their nuclear deterrent to conventional attack is an empty bluff and in fact worthless in relation to America. In a thermonuclear sense, China is as weak as a kitten compared to Russia, whose ICBM arsenal is essentially comparable to America's. You cannot successfully use fisticuffs on a man who is holding a loaded gun, especially if he is puny. He won't just take the pain. He will not.
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  29. It is a mistake to think it terms of breakthroughs in this war.
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  30. Logistics expert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du8IaRJWDsE
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  31. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has openly stated today that 'Ukraine would be more cooperative in halting attacks on Russian refineries' if the US provided additional support. The attacks are a political ploy, a wedge (the threat of US voters having to pay more for gas) to pry more support out of Biden though threatening him with defeat in the upcoming election.
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  32. Why is an unending war in Ukraine paid for by Europe in Europe's interest's?
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  33. There isn't going to be a rapprochement with China, so we hand China an alliance with Russia? That would be a disaster.
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  34. Ukraine is mounting a diversion in Kursk to stop the Russians taking a break in Donbass where it suits Ukraine to have Russia attacking? Sorry, I don't follow you.
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  35. According to Anders, Putin was already loosing anyway and the unnecessary SMO was doomed along with his regime. Prigozhin's echoing of Western analysis gives him clout? I think he must be mad as is anyone who really believes the Russian army is going to quit this war. To work psychological warfare needs to be in tandem with battlefield success and Ukraine has had none since November.
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  36. Russia is what it has always been: a military autocracy. You are not going to cause a political nervous breakdown of Russia by asking awkward questions about causalities as if it is a democracy.
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  37. Did America fear a Cuban invasion? No country can possibly invade the US, there never has been any danger of that.
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  38. I doubt that.
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  39. How can we square 'great powers are not above the law' ethos' theory of the West, with the US vetoing all international institutions' legal action against Israel over their armed forces behavior in Gaza? Like Israel, Russia has gone, and likely will continue to go, further that anyone in the West expected. Clearly, Putin places a much higher value on Ukraine being kept out of the Western alliance/sphere of influence than Western analyses comprehend. The job for politicians is to steer their government's policy in their country's interests. Be they large or small, the interests of no two countries are completely Identical, and so the limitations on a country's sovereignty by a world order may be theoretically absolute, yet in practice it is is always contingent on whether it violates that particular country's interests in the leadership's view. What small countries want is defence on the cheap, paid for by American taxpayers. Until recently even the huge Germany has managed to stay on the defence freeloader bandwagon without anyone noticing. Denmark giving its entire stock of artillery shells to Ukraine shows the girly men Danes have no intention of fighting anyone,
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  40. Putin wants to transform the international order? Putin' leads an 'Upper Volta with nuclear weapons' state that after two years and getting on for 100,000 KIA cannot even take Kharkiv, which is less than 20 miles from the internationally recognized borders of the Russian Federation! Ukraine is very important to Russia, but notwithstanding Western rhetoric, for the rest of the globe Ukraine is not the hinge on which the world order turns. The full on war fought by Putin that is calling into question the continues existance of his regime is not fought all over the planet, it is entirely in Ukraine and really all about Ukraine having tried to move from one sphere of influence to another, under the far from sensible expectation that Russia would be deterred by Ukraine's links with the US. States are limited by their assessment of whether their interests are being well served by peace. If you want peace, then you ought to make sure you are not compromising an another country's security interests in your interests.
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  41. https://youtu.be/UIe9UsltpW4?t=1382 The NYT published this as an op ed. Klein and Lind discusses the old Woke Twitter and the new Twitt. In Lind's Dems agenda was driven by non profits, who are not about winning elections. Hence powerful single issue progressives in the Dems and the trans issue being pushed too far in tail wagging the dog style. Trump's people were reportedly stunned by how effective their trans issue ads were.
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  42. Only a fool would say Russia will just do what it thinks is in its own interests irrespective of whether Russia comes to believe it is begining to lose . Once the loser becomes aware the tide has turned against him, he is willing to try risker strategies to rescue the situation. That is plain common sense. The ATACMs strikes into Russia proper are highly effective and Russia is going to start being outproduced in artillery in a years time; no one knows how the Kremlin might react to open ended US help to Ukraine in the context of Russia facing progressive military, geopolitical, and economic degradation. Anyway, the purpose of news is to let us know what is actually going on.
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  43. Mearsheimer would say that be they fascst or democratic arrangements of domestic politics do not matter much for a state's foreign policy . The attitude of Russia toward Ukraine has not changed in hundreds of years
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  44. It's a reflection of how countries in East Europe and the Baltic have pushed moving NATO East. Before the was in the White House Bush the Younger's minions reportedly encouraged Saakashvili to take Georgia into a confrontation with Russia in order to embarrass sitting President Obama. It was wrongly thought that Putin had backed down once the US showed support for Georgia. As President, Biden tried to correct what was thought to be Trump's lack of support for Ukraine and ended up encouraging Zelensky to stand up to Putin. How is that working out for Ukraine? I would note that the Ukrainian army report leaked today says that Wagner tactics are the most effective of any Russian force and the regular Russian army is begining to adopt Wagner methods. Wagner does have combat experience, so it is perhaps not so much privatization as quick practical methods such are used in business being shown to be more effective than Russian military culture stuck in the Soviet mindset.
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  45.  @mariaf.6601 Joining Nato was not enough for Poland, they wanted to be cocooned within Nato with member countries on all borders. So Ukraine had to join. When was Denmark conquered by Russians? Denmark pushed very hard for Ukraine's military to be part of international peacekeeping missions, as a way of showing they were up to Nato standards
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  46.  @mariaf.6601  Anders is a serving member of the Danish Navy is he not? Clinton was clear that Ukraine was different, and Yeltsin predicted war if it tried to join Nato Germany was cocooned, then Poland wanted to be. Yeltin's war in Chechenia added to the poles urgency. As Yuval Noah Harari said that is how empires grow.. Whether Poland anticipates getting some territory from all this I do not know, but Russia's invasion is not a subgoal in aid of an ultimate objective of conquering Poland. I think Putin wanted to be cocooned too. He screwed up royally, but is not the only who acted against their country's security interests. Ukraine forgot that they are an incident not an end for the US. If you doubt that why is it that Ukraine is being denied the most effective (deep strike) weapons and unable to do mobile warfare as a result, is being dragged into a rolling battle of attrition with Prigozhin's tens of thousands of expendable prisoners released from a life sentence to go to their deaths by drawing fire in Bakhmut ECT?
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  47.  @mariaf.6601  Remembering that Yeltsin said that extreme Nato expansion would lead to war. I don't really know why Demark was so keen so early to get Ukraine into Western military structures either, but they were. They, and others especially Poland had agency in creating the current situation ; it was not just Ukraine and Russia and the US. It does not seem to have proved a very effective way of ensuring security, this attempt to get Ukraine into Nato. And there was already the example of Georgia which was invaded in 2008 mere months after it was announced it would join Nato
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  48.  @mariaf.6601  Whereupon the Poles (supported by Denmark!) started agitating for Ukraine to join Nato even though everyone from Clinton to Brzezinski thought that was taking things too far for Russia standing for it.
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  49.  @mariaf.6601  I think the attitude of the US to Ukraine being brought into Nato altered from Clinton (who was dead set against it) to Bush, and while Bush had his own reasons, the East European countries had agency too.
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  50. Yeltsin never anticipated when he let Ukraine leave with Crimea that Ukraine would try to join Nato, but I think his and other Russian's attitude to that was no surprise. And Putin began warning what he would do in 2008. So what was the point of trying to get Ukraine in Nato?
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