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The Kiss Your Arse Goodbye Thread

Russia ready if west wants to fight for Ukraine on battlefield, Lavrov says​

If the west wants to fight for Ukraine on the battlefield, Russia is prepared for it, acting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA new agency on Monday.

The Kremlin said last week that sending Nato troops into Ukraine would potentially be extremely dangerous, and that Moscow was closely watching a Ukrainian petition calling for such an intervention.
 
The Kremlin has said that exercises involving non-strategic nuclear weapons that Vladimir Putin has ordered would be held “in the relevant timeframes” and that this was a matter for the defence ministry.

Earlier this month, the Russian president ordered his military to practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons after what Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the US.

When asked about the exercises on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “This is a question for the defence ministry. There is indeed an order from the Supreme commander-in-chief, it will be executed in the relevant timeframes.”

Putin has periodically warned that the country is ready to fight a nuclear war and regularly orders strategic nuclear drills, which typically employ intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is less common for Russia to hold tactical nuclear drills, which use weapons that have a lower yield and are meant to be used on the battlefield.
 
Zelensky's started calling for World War 3 again.



'Western allies are taking too long to make key decisions on military support for Ukraine, the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has told Reuters as Russia is expected to step up its offensive in the north-east.

He also said he was pushing partners to get more directly in the war by helping to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine and allowing Kyiv to use western weapons against enemy military equipment amassing near the border.

“Russians are using 300 planes on the territory of Ukraine. We need at least 120, 130 planes to resist in the sky,” Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine is waiting for the delivery of F-16 fighter jets. Zelenskiy said that if countries could not supply the planes straight away, they could still fly them from neighbouring Nato states and shoot down Russian missiles.


The Ukrainian president said Kyiv was negotiating with international partners to use their weapons to strike Russian military hardware at the border and further inside Russian territory. “So far, there is nothing positive,” he said. Zelenskiy reiterated that he had not broken agreements with allies not to use their weapons inside Russia. “We can’t put the whole volume of weapons at risk.”

Ukraine’s allies should lift such restrictions, the Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said.

“From the beginning we have made the mistake of limiting the Ukrainians because it could be seen as an escalation,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s supporters were “dominated by fear of Russia … the Ukrainians must be allowed to use the equipment provided to them so that they can achieve strategic objectives. They must be able to strike Russian territory, supply lines, and military units preparing to attack Ukraine. Only one side has rules imposed on it,” he said. “We must abandon these rules that we created.'
 
To think of all the hollow, cynical and naive talk of peace in a world at ease with capitalism and liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War...



'Putin said the US was stoking tensions and had transferred Typhon missile systems to Denmark and the Philippines, and compared the US plans to the Nato decision to deploy Pershing II launchers in western Europe in 1979.

The Soviet leadership, including the general secretary, Yuri Andropov, feared Pershing II deployments were part of an elaborate US-led plan to decapitate the Soviet Union by taking out its political and military leadership.

“This situation is reminiscent of the events of the cold war related to the deployment of American medium-range Pershing missiles in Europe,” Putin said.

The Russian president repeated an earlier warning that Moscow could resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them if the US brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.'




 
What a time to be alive...





'Ukrainian insiders have also talked about using the threat of long-range missiles against Russia to try to force an end to the war, through a “demonstration strike” that would make clear to the Kremlin that it is possible to threaten the heartlands around Moscow. It is not obvious if Moscow would react so benignly, however, which may be why Burns, starkly, said the west should not be intimidated by Russian threats of nuclear escalation, raising the possibility that Putin may do just that.

Zelenskiy argued at a meeting of western defence ministers in Germany last week that being able to strike into its enemy’s territory would help ensure “Russia is motivated to seek peace”. But the calibration has to be careful. Time may be short for Ukraine, given that a US election looms in less than two months, and on Tuesday, one of the candidates, Donald Trump, would not say if he wanted Ukraine to win.

Missile diplomacy may not have been so significant since the time of the cold war.'
 


'Russia and Iran, though not historically allies, have become increasingly united in their opposition to the west, part of a wider “axis of upheaval” that also includes to varying degrees China and North Korea, reflecting a return to an era of state competition reminiscent of the cold war.'


Since when has state competition been regarded as 'reminiscent of the cold war?' It seems to be more reminiscent of the history of the preceding decades and centuries, to which the end of the cold war returned us all, contrary to the expectations of all those who assumed it signalled a convergance on the ideals of the neo-liberals/neocons who were unfortuntely in the ascendency when Communist governments decided to throw in the towel. Those whose delusions led directly to the current war in Ukraine. Political and historical illiteracy (maybe deliberately pushed by contemporary, poltically naive liberals on both left and right) is rife in today's world.


'Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine.

During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb.

British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow.'
 
This seems to have been US thinking on the matter back in '22.

'The Russian leader would not use a nuclear weapon until he saw an existential threat to Russia or his regime, Haines argued. But she added that he could view the prospect of defeat in Ukraine as constituting such a threat.

“We do think that [Putin’s perception of an existential threat] could be the case in the event that he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that Nato in effect is either intervening or about to intervene in that context, which would obviously contribute to a perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine,” Haines told the committee hearing.

She added that the world would probably have some warning that nuclear use was imminent.

“There are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to nuclear weapons, and also that he would be likely to engage in some signaling beyond what he’s done thus far before doing so,” Haines said.

That signaling could include a further large-scale nuclear exercise involving the substantial dispersal of mobile intercontinental missiles, heavy bombers and strategic submarines.'

 
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Yeah, yeah, we know-it's only rhetoric and empty threats. Russian nuclear weapons don't work anymore anyway: it says so on X and Youtube.

So it will never happen. Until it happens.



It's so stupid. I think it's fair to say that noone can be more than 99% certain that Putin is bluffing.

Anyone here 100% sure?

So guess what - the bluff wins!

Unless you think a 1% doubt is good enough odds to burns us all to cinders. It isn't and you're a psycho if you think that by the way.
 
i think Putin's bluff ultimately wins because the stakes are so high. There's no room for error and anyone claiming they are 100% sure he is bluffing is wrong. No-one can be more than 99% sure of what's going on in his head. Or even 75% sure.
 
i think Putin's bluff ultimately wins because the stakes are so high. There's no room for error and anyone claiming they are 100% sure he is bluffing is wrong. No-one can be more than 99% sure of what's going on in his head. Or even 75% sure.
And you're a 'psycho' if you don't acquiesce to the bluff because the stakes are so high?
 
And your a 'psycho' if you don't aquiesce the bluff because the stakes are so high?

I suppose I was imagining a room full of John Bolton type hawks.

But if you're prepared to call the bluff I'd say that was quite out there. It either means you're excessively, unreasonably confident or such a risk-taker that you're a danger to others.
 
I suppose I was imagining a room full of John Bolton type hawks.

But if you're prepared to call the bluff I'd say that was quite out there. It either means you're excessively, unreasonably confident or such a risk-taker that you're a danger to others.
Nobody needs John Bolton type hawks I agree, except perhaps the arms manufacturers.
 
I suppose I was imagining a room full of John Bolton type hawks.

But if you're prepared to call the bluff I'd say that was quite out there. It either means you're excessively, unreasonably confident or such a risk-taker that you're a danger to others.
But then any bully with enough nuclear capability can then demand whatever they like upon that basis.
 
But then any bully with enough nuclear capability can then demand whatever they like upon that basis.

I guess so. It's one reason I'm such a pessimist. Nuclear proliferation is inevitable. Stand offs will be inevitable. One day someone is going to mess up.
 
Despite all the hubris at the time, the 'victors' totally fucked the end of the Cold War, due to an over-confidence in their favoured doctrine of neo-liberalism, which they seemed to believe had the power to overcome all serious conflct, domestically and internationally.

Little more than 30 years later we see a possible all-out war in the Middle East and the very real threat of a nuclear exchange, if not full-scale nuclear war. And that's leaving aside all the avoidable international bloodshed in between. Meanwhile, societies in the European capitalist heartlands are riven by irrconcilable conflicts, the ongoing threat of ethnically-based civil conflict and the rise of the most serious fascist movements since the end of WW2. So serious that the liberals are co-opting some of the neo-fascists into the established order. And all this against the backdrop of a climate crisis that looks to have gone beyond any human solution-and which can only add fuel to the fire of the domestic and international crises.
 
Despite all the hubris at the time, the 'victors' totally fucked the end of the Cold War, due to an over-confidence in their favoured doctrine of neo-liberalism, which they seemed to believe had the power to overcome all serious conflct, domestically and internationally.

Little more than 30 years later we see a possible all-out war in the Middle East and the very real threat of a nuclear exchange, if not full-scale nuclear war. And that's leaving aside all the avoidable international bloodshed in between. Meanwhile, societies in the European capitalist heartlands are riven by irrconcilable conflicts, the very real threat of ongoing ethnically-based civil conflict and the rise of the most serious fascist movements since the end of WW2. So serious that the liberals are co-opting some of the neo-fascists into the established order. And all this against the backdrop of a climate crisis that looks to have gone beyond any human solution-and which can only add fuel to the fire of the domestic and international crises.
End of history but not how they meant it.
 
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