Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 1035 of 1104
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.
Krugman said the quiet part out loud: We've been running the world on fear. He probably didn't even realize what he just admitted.
What will "the world" do when it no longer fears us?
I don't know, but payback's a bitch.
SECOND:
Krugman worked in the Reagan White House. Krugman also travels extensively outside the US. Krugman wrote a series of college economics textbooks that are the best sellers in the world.
Appeal to authority. Not a valid argument.
Quote:
He knows exactly how the US got where it is.
And, "where" are we, exactly? Still trying to make the world safe for financialists??
Quote:
Military/Cultural/Financial/Scientific Superiority did it. He has said that the Republican Party has been a catastrophe for the prosperity of its citizens because it has damaged everything that made America Great.
Well, finally something I agree with.
But here's the thing: What is “great“? Does it mean secure and prosperous? Or does it mean being a world- dominating power and stomping the globe?
We became a world power for two reasons: production and geography.
Our military, cultural, and financial power are based on economic power.
Economic power is based on production.
Production was based on abundant resources, protectionist policies, and investment in production and infrastructure (canals, oil, steel, railroads, telegraphs, electrcity, etc).
The second major factor was geographic accident. Bc altho we were involved in two world wars, they didn't take place on our soil.
Our economic power was diminished with our turn towards financialism, and for THAT we can thank BILL CLINTON, a DEMOCRAT, who willingly bought into the globalist plan to divide the world into interlocked specializations:
commodities
cheap labor
finance/ debt issuance
locked down by "free trade" agreements, to benefit transnational corporations. NOWHERE does it benefit the people of each nation.
******
Quote:
THUGR:
Sigmym, with your every post, you come across as a Russian propagandist. A propagandist that is not very bright.
You STILL don't get it, do you???
Wow.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Who's funding that big mouth? He ain't.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
Fuck. We are. Again...
House passes Ukraine aid over objections of GOP leaders
https://www.ms.now/news/house-passes-ukraine-aid
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says
Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all
By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/
Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.
"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that the alliance's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.
It carries weight because it comes from the officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's opening phase. His account confirms what Kyiv has argued since 2022: that Western caution, not Ukrainian capacity, set the ceiling on what Ukraine could achieve.
No strategy to win
Bauer was blunt that victory was never the stated goal. "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war,'" he said. Nor was it framed around Russia losing. What emerged instead was a promise to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes"—endurance, not victory.
He traced the gap to how the alliance decides. "You need one nation that says 'no' and it's 'no,'" he said, explaining why NATO never deployed troops, never admitted Ukraine, and never did more than it did.
The cost of waiting
The delay had a price Ukrainians paid on the battlefield. Had the tanks, HIMARS, ATACMS, and F-16s arrived in the spring or summer of 2022, when Ukraine was retaking ground, Russia "would be in a much more difficult spot," Bauer said. Instead, the long Western debate gave Moscow time to build the defensive works that stalled Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.
He did not spare his own side: "I think we should have done more."
Bauer now argues Ukraine must be admitted to NATO, warning that excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original error. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that also covered Russia's 2022 nuclear threats.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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NATO had no plan for Ukraine to win—and isn’t likely to make one, former chief says
Admiral Rob Bauer says Ukraine “might have won” in 2022—if the weapons had come in time
By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/natos-former-military-chief-adm
its-there-was-never-a-plan-for-ukraine-to-win/
In an interview with Euromaidan Press during the GLOBSEC 2026 Forum in Prague, Admiral Rob Bauer—who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025—told us that if Ukraine had received in early summer 2022 the weapons it eventually received much later, "you might have won" the war. The admission, from the senior officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's first phase, is among the most direct concessions from a NATO authority that the West's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Bauer described an alliance that operated without a strategy for Ukrainian victory—"It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war'"—confirmed on the record that Russia's nuclear threats to Paris, London, and Washington in 2022 were met with a US promise of conventional destruction of Russian forces in Ukraine, and argued that Ukraine must now be admitted to NATO because excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original mistake.
The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity. Bauer's framings and corrections — including where he pushed back on our questions — are preserved.
Russia's red lines go up in smoke one by one. Putin said every time there is a red line: with the HIMARS, then tanks, and then F-16s and ATACMS and missiles. And every time we found out later that it wasn't a red line—after we took too long to say "yes" to the additional capability for Ukraine.
Now, again, you say they [Russia] had a veto. I agree with you that it's not smart that we, as an Alliance, started to say from the start what we were not going to do. That doesn't help with deterrence. If you say, "Oh, by the way, we're not going to get militarily involved," that helps the enemy greatly. But this was new territory: Afghanistan and Iraq were different because they weren't a near-peer fight like in Ukraine. And a lot of politicians tread cautiously because it was new territory and not part of the "normal" plans for NATO. Maybe too cautiously.
EP: Ukraine has a 20-billion-euro state budget gap for 2026, and is now fully dependent on European support since US financial assistance ended. Meanwhile, the EU rearm plan is 800 billion euros for European rearmament, and Europe is still buying over 1 billion euros of Russian fossil fuels every month. From the Military Committee seat, is the funding architecture telling the strategy? European future readiness prioritized over Ukrainian present survival?
Admiral Bauer: A lot of questions in one. Of course there's a connection between funding Ukraine and our own ability to defend ourselves in the long run. If Ukraine goes sour, if Ukraine is no longer a sovereign state, we're in much more shit than we are now. So yes, there's a connection. . . .
But for me it's clear: we have to make sure you remain a sovereign state. And I'm more and more convinced you need to be part not only of the EU architecture but of NATO. Because if we don't allow Ukraine into the Alliance, we make a big mistake—leaving out the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians.
Much more at https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/natos-former-military-chief-adm
its-there-was-never-a-plan-for-ukraine-to-win/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says
Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all
By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/
Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.
"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that the alliance's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.
It carries weight because it comes from the officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's opening phase. His account confirms what Kyiv has argued since 2022: that Western caution, not Ukrainian capacity, set the ceiling on what Ukraine could achieve.
No strategy to win
Bauer was blunt that victory was never the stated goal. "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war,'" he said. Nor was it framed around Russia losing. What emerged instead was a promise to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes"—endurance, not victory.
He traced the gap to how the alliance decides. "You need one nation that says 'no' and it's 'no,'" he said, explaining why NATO never deployed troops, never admitted Ukraine, and never did more than it did.
The cost of waiting
The delay had a price Ukrainians paid on the battlefield. Had the tanks, HIMARS, ATACMS, and F-16s arrived in the spring or summer of 2022, when Ukraine was retaking ground, Russia "would be in a much more difficult spot," Bauer said. Instead, the long Western debate gave Moscow time to build the defensive works that stalled Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.
He did not spare his own side: "I think we should have done more."
Bauer now argues Ukraine must be admitted to NATO, warning that excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original error. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that also covered Russia's 2022 nuclear threats.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
He doesn't fucking know.
He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Fuck you dude. Get the fuck out of here with that bitch ass shit.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:6ix, you know this how? 6ix is a lying sack of shit who knows nothing about this guy, other than 6ix vehemently disagreeing with the military expert who was there when the civilian politicians from NATO countries were making decisions that would kill a million Russians and Ukrainians.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
He doesn't fucking know.
He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.
From Wikipedia: Robert Peter Bauer (born 11 November 1962) is a Dutch retired military officer of the Royal Netherlands Navy who served as Chair of the NATO Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, after succeeding Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach. Bauer formerly served as the Chief of Defence (Dutch: Commandant der Strijdkrachten) from October 2017 to April 2021, and as the Vice Chief of Defence of the Netherlands of the from 1 September 2015 to 13 July 2017. Bauer was also involved in counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Horn of Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bauer
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you know this how? 6ix is a lying sack of shit who knows nothing about this guy, other than 6ix vehemently disagreeing with the military expert who was there when the civilian politicians from NATO countries were making decisions that would kill a million Russians and Ukrainians.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
He doesn't fucking know.
He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.
From Wikipedia: Robert Peter Bauer (born 11 November 1962) is a Dutch retired military officer of the Royal Netherlands Navy who served as Chair of the NATO Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, after succeeding Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach. Bauer formerly served as the Chief of Defence (Dutch: Commandant der Strijdkrachten) from October 2017 to April 2021, and as the Vice Chief of Defence of the Netherlands of the from 1 September 2015 to 13 July 2017. Bauer was also involved in counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Horn of Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bauer
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
He served NOTHING.
As long as Big Daddy America was throwing all their money around everywhere and coming to the aid of any dipshit nobody, he's never had to do a single fucking day of work in his life.
Go fuck yourself, Second.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says
Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all
By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/
Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.
"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that ....
... NATO lost.
Bc “not winning“ is another way of saying “losing“.
Interesting idea tho.
I don't know who would have won a full-on war of NATO v Russia in Ukraine. I know that Russia felt threatened enough to bring up nukes if it was attacked directly. But the West was so certain that booting Russia off SWIFT and sanctioning its major exports and blowing up Nordstream would collapse the Russian economy that they never came up with a military Plan B. Bc picking a fight with Russia over Ukraine was never about Ukraine anyway, it was about taking over Russia.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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What’s Eating Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Putin’s Brain’?
Even Russia’s leading warmonger has run out of ways to justify the Ukraine invasion.
By Simon Shuster | June 6, 2026, 7 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/06/putin-russia-eli
te-ukraine-war/687446/
No Russian thinker has worked harder than Aleksandr Dugin to rationalize the invasion of Ukraine. Long before it started, Dugin came up with a whole philosophical system, known as “neo-Eurasianism,” to explain why Russia, the country with the largest landmass in the world, would need to steal land from its neighbors and kill many thousands of people in the process. His books and lectures on the subject earned him the nickname “Putin’s brain.” That overstates his closeness to the Russian president. But his views reflect the mood among the war’s cheerleaders in Moscow, how firmly they support the conflict, and how they try to justify it to themselves (and everyone else).
Judging by Dugin’s most recent pronouncements, they have run out of cogent stories to tell. When Dugin attempted to explain the war’s rationale last week to Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian social-media influencer with millions of followers, he could not make any sense of it. Even a softball question—“What is worth fighting for today?”—led the philosopher down a spiral of inanity so bizarre that Sobchak, long rumored to be the goddaughter of Vladimir Putin, could not listen with a straight face.
Dugin’s description of Russia after the war sounded postapocalyptic. “First of all, it’s an image of life on the land,” he said. “It is an enormous exodus from the cities, an almost religious exodus, like the Jews from Egypt.” The cities of Russia, he continued, would turn into “neo-ancient ruins,” and the people would return to living in the countryside, communicating with one another through “an internet of Russian villages, closed off and guarded from the toxic incursions of the enemy.”
The Russian state has often forced its people into strange contortions of the mind. By law, Russians are prohibited from publicly calling the war a war rather than a “special military operation,” and Putin has urged them to believe that Ukraine started it. Still, the national capacity for self-deception has its limits, and recent developments suggest that Putin has found them.
Ukrainian drones now pummel industrial targets across Russia nightly, shutting down oil refineries, snarling logistics, and forcing airports to close for days at a time. More than 1 million Russians have been killed or badly wounded in the war, a toll too great to hide—almost every family has been affected. The gap between what Russians know to be true about the war and what the Kremlin says about it has grown so wide that even warmongers like Dugin struggle to bridge it. Instead, the ideologues of Russian imperialism have turned to random musings and belligerent hate speech, which seems intended to confuse rather than convince.
At various points during his interview with Sobchak, Dugin called the sport of surfing evil and said that its practitioners should be purged. He did not provide a coherent reason. He expressed similar hatred toward Russia’s favorite cartoon character, the jug-eared Cheburashka, who has repeatedly served as the mascot for the Russian Olympic Team. No political constituency exists for such views in Russia or elsewhere. They only allow Dugin to distract from the fact that he has nothing else to say, no way to spin the war he has championed for much of his career.
“It shows that everyone is beyond exhausted,” Mikhail Zygar, the author of several books about the Russian elite, most recently The Dark Side of the Earth, told me. “There is no one left who wants the war to continue, with the possible exception of Putin and Dugin.” A year or two ago, wealthy and powerful Russians tended to support the war, even in their private conversations, because they knew the dangers of losing it. “They would say things like: Yes, maybe it’s bad we started all this, but now we have no choice but to win,” Zygar said. “No
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Anniversary: Three years after Russia destroyed Kakhovka Dam, real death toll is still unknown
On 6 June 2023, Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant while occupying the dam, flooding 80 settlements, forcing nearly 4,000 people to evacuate, and killing at least 34.
By Olena Mukhina | 06/06/2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/the-worst-environmental-catastr
ophe-since-chornobyl-disaster-three-years-after-russia-destroyed-kakhovka-dam-real-death-toll-is-still-unknown/
Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister for Reconstruction Oleksii Kuleba calls the destruction "one of the largest war crimes of Russia against people and the environment."
Who blew up Kakhovka dam?
Russian forces occupied the dam complex at the moment of the explosion. According to the investigation by The New York Times, the destruction required substantial quantities of explosives placed inside the dam structure — access that only Russian forces had. Ukraine's Prosecutor General referred the case to the International Criminal Court within days, but no ICC determination has been issued specifically on the Kakhovka HPP.
The downstream effects of the destruction — flooded villages, lost Black Sea ecosystems, drinking-water crises across Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, and the disappearance of the Kakhovka Reservoir itself — continue to shape life across southern Ukraine.
$14 billion in damage and Black Sea consequences
The Kakhovka Reservoir was the largest on the Dnipro River, holding 18 cubic kilometers of water, which was released over 3 to 4 days through the breach. A Post-Disaster Needs Assessment jointly prepared by Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers and the United Nations originally estimated total losses at over $11 billion.
Former Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrii Melnyk called the destruction "the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chornobyl disaster," per CBC News.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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