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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

Nobody is really challenging Zelensky's demand for 1% of Nato's weapons. Soon there'll be some major announcements about it.

The request included him asking for 1% of NATOs planes but the requests for aircraft have been ongoing for weeks and apart from one false start there have been absolutely no serious indications that any planes at all are forthcoming.

There are many real challenges to his requests, but many of them are unspoken publicly. The silence still ends up speaking volumes.
 
May be smaller but the Russians have been no slouches in making their own war films, there are loads of them on the streaming services, varying in quality from bloody awful to quite watchable. I saw somewhere they bought a load of T34s from Laos, films for the making of.
Amazon Prime is awash with glossy Russian-made war films from the last decade or so.
 
If you can't manage a historical analysis it's not your place to criticise those who can. Go back to school.

I think it's stretching a lot to give your rather shaky analogies to previous conflicts the label of "historical analysis". The geopolitical contexts, the technologies, the social and cultural backgrounds haven't stood still since then. With previous conflicts we also have the benefit of hindsight, which we don't currently don't enjoy as this particular chapter of history hasn't quite finished yet. So by that alone it seems premature to start making comparisons.

We might call them World Wars 1 and 2, but they were still distinct conflicts even if they're historically linked for more reasons than just serialisation. Then you've got all that Cold War business complicating matters, adding another several decades of history before the 30-odd years since the Soviet Union collapsed. I'm not saying that history has no pattern and is just utter chaos, but history doesn't recur in the way you seem to be suggesting.
 
The request included him asking for 1% of NATOs planes but the requests for aircraft have been ongoing for weeks and apart from one false start there have been absolutely no serious indications that any planes at all are forthcoming.

There are many real challenges to his requests, but many of them are unspoken publicly. The silence still ends up speaking volumes.
My feeling is that the penny has dropped with Western leaders, but it takes time for the backstage discussions necessary for a harmonious announcememnt of heavy weapons donations. It's quite a big escalation. And it's good for it to look like a firm resolution. People have learned that Putin acts when he perceives the West to be divided. So I'm not disheartened by a short period of silence. Putin's next massacre will arrive any day now. It would be good to use that as a platform for a Nato escalation.

Zelensky always asks for more than he can get, in the expectation he'll be met halfway. He knew a no fly zone was impossible, but he kept asking for it, on and on and on, and he was given a decent supply of missiles which his people made excellent use of. Without the amazing success rate of those missiles, everyone would be talking about giving in.
 
Hopefully I can take this as the largest sign yet of Russias failure to achieve certain objectives such as taking Kyiv, and that it represents their attempt to spin everything as a success whilst also massively curtailing their remaining ambitions....





From the 13:59 entry of the BBC live updates page https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60856533
February 25: we want to liberate all Ukrainians from oppression, so that they can decide their own fate, demilitarise and de-nazify

March 9: actually, we do not intend to overthrow the Ukrainian government

March 25: Can you please just let us have Donbas?
 
My feeling is that the penny has dropped with Western leaders, but it takes time for the backstage discussions necessary for a harmonious announcememnt of heavy weapons donations. It's quite a big escalation. And it's good for it to look like a firm resolution. People have learned that Putin acts when he perceives the West to be divided. So I'm not disheartened by a short period of silence. Putin's next massacre will arrive any day now. It would be good to use that as a platform for a Nato escalation.

Zelensky always asks for more than he can get, in the expectation he'll be met halfway. He knew a no fly zone was impossible, but he kept asking for it, on and on and on, and he was given a decent supply of missiles which his people made excellent use of. Without the amazing success rate of those missiles, everyone would be talking about giving in.

Its not really clear what sort of weapons you think 'met half way' would include, or exactly what penny you think has dropped in the West. It seems clear enough that the west will be keen to be seen to still be doing plenty, and will supply more of what they've already supplied, as well as the possibility of supplying stuff that fits in with fears of chemical weapons being used. But I dont have any particular expectations beyond that, maybe they will go further, maybe not. I find it impossible to tell, but I expect the reasons they didnt go further in ther past still apply.

By the way here is a CNN article about more specific details Ukraine sent to the US congress:

 
I'm sorry I can't help finding Putin's JK Rowling comments hilarious 😆

I did laugh and wondered how that went down on twitter, but I didnt go and look. Putin hasnt been spending enough time on Twitter lately, otherwise he could also have made use of the fact that people there noticed that Graham Lineham was crying in an interview the other day about how his bigotry cost him his marriage etc.
 
He went on to compare the treatment Russia had received with the controversy surrounding Rowling’s comments on transgender people. “Recently they cancelled the children’s writer Joanne Rowling because she – the author of books that have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide – fell out of favour with fans of so-called gender freedoms,” Putin said.
 
Chair of politics department at University of Austin.

<e2a: for those who don't keep up with the culture wars, UATX is not the University of Austin Texas, but a kind of IDW-affiliated anti-woke private college. Yet to be established, but vast amounts of money behind it>
 
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