Ukraine Always Get What You Want

Putin will never face justice any more than trump will. We are so conditioned to find excuses, loop holes, mitigation and rationalizations to forgive abhorrent behavior that we can’t convict these people.

 

Tapper is about to have Rubio on.

So if you get with the program and jump on the team and come on in for the big win then you get primetime minutes on CNN.

 

I don't know. The same people have held the keys for going on 80 years and nobody has turned them. Not the exact same people, of course, but the same types. And if Stalin never gave the order, and Kruschev never did, Vlad and his saggy pecs aren't going to either.

 

So you must have a straw hat.

 

Stalin only had the keys for a few years before he died. If he'd had them 10 years earlier you can be damn sure he'd have used them.
Khrushchev almost used them, but thankfully wasn't backed into a corner like Vlad is becoming.
Don't underestimate Putin's current irrationality, or whatever the the he'll is going on with him.

 

From the comments:


Apparently unlearned lessons from WWII: attacking civilians only strengthens their resolve.

You haven't taken a city, you've trapped yourself in a city full of people who will slit your throat as soon as you go to sleep.

 

What if he actually has undergone some kind of psychotic break? Or, as some people have conjectured, what if he's dying? What if he just doesn't give a damn and he wants his legacy to be that he dropped the nuke?

 

A good generic NYT story:

The Roots of the Ukraine War: How the Crisis Developed

 

These are the real key parts of that story, in my opinion:

The invasion threatens to destabilize the already volatile post-Soviet region, with serious consequences for the security structure that has governed Europe since the 1990s.Mr. Putin has long lamented the loss of Ukraine and other republics when the Soviet Union broke apart. Now, diminishing NATO, the military alliance that helped keep the Soviets in check, may be his real mission. Before invading, Russia made a list of far-reaching demands to reshape that structure — positions NATO and the United States rejected.

and

The Russian president calls NATO’s expansion menacing, and the prospect of Ukraine joining it a major threat to his country. As Russia has grown more assertive and stronger militarily, his complaints about NATO have grown more strident. He has repeatedly invoked the specter of American ballistic missiles and combat forces in Ukraine, though U.S., Ukrainian and NATO officials insist there are none.