I don’t actually think Trump wants to get into the conflict but I think he’s struggling to deliver his pledge to end it because Putin isn’t playing ball and is in for the long haul.
So I think Trump wants out. He’s enough to deal with at home.
We’ll see how it plays quite soon I think.

Posted by: PalmaSailor | Feb 9 2025 14:26 utc | 4

Once signed, it becomes a trigger. “The rare earth minerals now belongs to us” trump will say. “So Russia had better leave those areas”.
Posted by: HERMIUS | Feb 9 2025 14:15 utc | 2
That’s never going to wash. The Z man isn’t even the legitimate President. His mandate has expired. Nothing he signs is valid.

Posted by: PalmaSailor | Feb 9 2025 14:29 utc | 6

PalmaSailor@7….it is not about needs or wants, it’s about control…. of resources.
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Feb 9 2025 14:37 utc | 8

PalmaSailor@7….it is not about needs or wants, it’s about control…. of resources.
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Feb 9 2025 14:37 utc | 8
Russia has enough resources. They don’t need anymore, they just don’t want them taken by anyone else.
Thinking otherwise is projection.

Posted by: PalmaSailor | Feb 9 2025 14:42 utc | 10

Interesting parallels between WWI and the Russo-Ukrainian war by the Chief Editor of Asia Times:
https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/how-wars-end-and-why-ukraines-may-drag-on/

Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 9 2025 14:57 utc | 12

Posted by: PalmaSailor | Feb 9 2025 14:01 utc | 1

I think Trump is setting up to exit.

Asking what’s in it for us (rare earths) is part of delaying and setting obstacles and creating friction onto the continued spending of US taxpayer money into the failed project, same as freezing the flow of cash going thru USAID (which had goals that are wider than just Ukraine). It’s the new admin method of disengagement.
It has to be done in such a manner that it doesn’t lead to an immediate collapse of ukrop forces and yet it doesn’t take so long that it becomes Trump’s Vietnam. There is an optimum timing in between these two extremes.

Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 9 2025 15:09 utc | 14

I’m compelled to share an observation I’ve made concerning the intense scrutiny on USAID in America at the moment. RFK Jr. can be seen with Tucker Carlson discussing USAID financing the Maidan Coup. This interview as far as I know, and the topic of it, remains a big secret in the Wretched City and has received no attention.
If Americans want to sit at the table with Putin to try and stop the fighting in US backed and led former state of Ukraine they’d have to admit they started it. Unless the USAID – Maidan connection is made I have no problem saying USAID ain’t going away. It’s just under new management and what we’re seeing now is just a witch hunt.

Posted by: chunga | Feb 9 2025 15:30 utc | 16

PalmaSailor@12…..predictable and history? It’s playing out in real time in front of our eyes….and Russia atm, is hemmed in. Regardless of how many Ukies they slaughter, even unelected 404 ex officials get a free pass from the Russians. They are stuck, micro movement on the LOCC, Dima had a few vids the other day, the weather is so unpredictable there right now, that Russians are using (like 404) civvie vehicles to get around, armour is restricted to paved roads which makes for long lines of juicy targets: see Dima vids. So as long as Russians are blasting their way to, fill in your favorite city to be freed, they still die. Almost like the RF MOD is stuck with a bunch of broken Hazelnuts. Memory “holed” I guess.
Cheers M
……it’s way to early to call, part of the long game plan, when the game, it is a game right, the deaths are just part of the “look how great we are, we killed millions. That’s how we know we are winning”….quite the legacy, regardless of whoever’s Trident flies over the ramparts at the end…..but, does it ever end? Or just another cycle of human madness…..predicted by past history.

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Feb 9 2025 15:34 utc | 18

Always amazes me how the country that is the root cause of this conflict can talk about a negotiated settlement, or a ceasefire, or a freezing of the lines of conflict. It all presumes a leverage over Russia which the US does not have, and the US as a detached observer of the conflict, which is a total fraud. It reminds me of the southern states referring to slavery as the ‘peculiar institution,’ as if it was something that just happened in their region to the surprise of everyone. The conflict ends when the US does nothing – no more weapons, no ISR, no command and control, no Starlink, you’re on your own Ukraine, best of luck. Of course, Trump can’t just do that, so we go through this charade.
The idea that Russia will agree to a ceasefire, with a demilitarized zone patrolled by NATO, or troops from West Europe, is ludicrous on its face. I don’t see this conflict ending without western powers getting the hell out of Ukraine and staying out. So far Putin is playing coy. He’s not going to respond to these ‘peace’ plans with a “why would we agree to any of this when your proxy is losing?” Better to leave them stew in their fantasies until reality is unavoidable. At this time he has several excuses to avoid being candid – Ukrainians are still in Kursk, Zelensky illegitimate. The war goes on.

Posted by: Mike R | Feb 9 2025 15:49 utc | 20

Posted by: Newbie | Feb 9 2025 15:51 utc | 21
##########
Everyone includes the Germans, Brits, French, and Poles in the AFU numbers.
Oh, and the Americans and Canadians.
It’s not AFU losses, they are NATO losses, which matters most at the officer level, as those are a scarce resources which are difficult to replace.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 9 2025 15:54 utc | 22

A Drone War as the West-Ukraine War devolves to be was an easy prediction, typicaly–
“Russian air defenses shoot down HIMARS rocket, 93 fixed-wing drones in past day” TASS today.
However the deeply horrible implications of drone warring have yet to be admitted. Once removed war is cheap and deadly and barely lossless so it is the future. A boundless future.

Posted by: emagnostic | Feb 9 2025 16:30 utc | 24

Posted by: The Busker | Feb 9 2025 16:25 utc | 23
Thanks for your weekly summary, which as usual, is informative and concise.
About Trump receiving the smirking Netanyahu being a shameful act, have you not considered the possibility that this was a condition for Netanyahu and his government to accept the current truce in Gaza?

Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Feb 9 2025 16:48 utc | 26

Trump wants to end the war. Zelenskys phone call with his Ukrainian agent vindman initiated an impeachment. Trump was ready to endorsed a cease fire freezing and was able to get ukraine to go along with it. Russia won’t though. This leads to a “maximum” pressure campaign after which ukraine and russia can fight with sanctions on russia and nothing new beyond Bidens stuff for Ukraine. This will lead to exhaustion for both sides and a begrudging cease fire, according to Trumps calculations.
Russian calculations(and mine) are different. They can get around maximum sanctions too and Russia will fight indefinitely. Ukraine won’t and will be collapse once it’s subsidies run out.
Perhaps Trump thought of this too. It all adds up to he tried but the combatants wouldn’t couldn’t quit until the end. His hands are clean and Europe can own a devastated ukraine and indefinitely angry Russia demanding money up front for resources(in rubles).

Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Feb 9 2025 16:58 utc | 28

This rare earth obsession is ridiculous…They are found all over the globe, and their main use currently is to build electric cars, solar panels, and other trendy stuff which pretend to be good for the environment, but aren’t…But Trump is just winging it, getting Zelensky ready for his plan, which will go nowhere anyway….

Posted by: pyrrhus | Feb 9 2025 17:22 utc | 30

There will be a land bridge from Kaliningrad to Transnistria before this conflicts is ended. Anything less is wishful thinking.

Posted by: b4real | Feb 9 2025 17:36 utc | 32

@Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Feb 9 2025 17:47 utc | 33
Yup, it’s beginning to look that way. Which is a shame. All that blood and treasure and they couldn’t secure Odessa, Kaliningrad, and Transnistria.

Posted by: bored | Feb 9 2025 18:31 utc | 34

Posted by: bored | Feb 9 2025 18:31 utc | 34
followed by an equally dumbass statement

Posted by: ctiger | Feb 9 2025 18:34 utc | 36

Why? What does the west have that .Rus needs or wants?
Posted by: PalmaSailor | Feb 9 2025 14:31 utc | 7

The main thing Russia wants to negotiate with the west is moving NATO troops back to where they were in 1990 (when the US verbally promised ‘not one inch eastward’ for NATO).
What the US will want in return for this is subject to reasonable negotiations (rump Ukraine access to the Black Sea via Odessa, for example).
Since Trump has long wanted to withdraw from NATO (thus abolishing it), these are reasonable things for the US and Russia to negotiate.
Per Grok:

The U.S. reportedly committed to NATO not expanding “one inch eastward” during discussions in 1990, particularly highlighted by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s conversation with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. However, these commitments were verbal and not formalized in any written agreements, leading to ongoing debates about their validity and interpretation.

Posted by: Contrarian_Ed | Feb 9 2025 18:45 utc | 38

@30
Zelenski the former president of 404 along with 404 unelected parliament is scamming on rare earths.
.
U$$A has plenty in the ground.
The reason U$$A imports them is it is rather ugly to refine the ores.
This issue is U$$A scamming for 404, and its illigitiment group of usurpers.

Posted by: paddy | Feb 9 2025 18:46 utc | 40

Scott Ritter just have had the idea of “dry-up” 404. If no money will be funneled towards them, nobody there will get pay checks and so after 4 to 8 weeks or so, there will be a grassroot revolution against Z & Co.. solidarity allways is pending of getting money..
may be, that is the real secret plan to leave that lost war without loosing the face too much?

Posted by: ableman | Feb 9 2025 18:51 utc | 42

Gut feeling says USAID dismantling does a lot of damage to Nato war effort in Ukraine. 90% of Ukrainian propaganda channels vanish into thin air with no more funding. Previously mobilization exempted reporters and USAID now put to front lines. The thing will fall, more switch to Russian ranks or surrender, Nato loses grip, at least east of Dnieper. Kiev will become a cheap whorehouse with a lot of unemployed TikTokers and USAID employed propagandists. The new capital will be Zaporozhye or Dnepropetrovsk, which is RU oriented or at minimum neutral.
Add to that loss of funds to pay corrupt politicians, officials and military men. No wages for soldiers. Mutinies and localized abandoning of positions, desertions, surrenders and switching side.
The bonus would be Nikolaev and Odessa oblast to the new Dnepropetrovsk based government, which can easily sway Romania and Hungary, and begin a death spiral of EU/Nato dismantling.

Posted by: unimperator | Feb 9 2025 18:57 utc | 44

Posted by: Jerr | Feb 9 2025 18:53 utc | 43
############
Batteries perform poorly in colder temperatures.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 9 2025 19:00 utc | 46

I’m glad the SU25 pilot was rescued. I hate even one Russian soldier getting killed. I’ve also become indifferent to whatever Ukie is blown to bits or shot the barrier troops. My sympathy for non voluntary conscripts dried up well over a year ago.
I also don’t see anything that shows Russia having too much of a problem slowly and methodically chewing their way all the way to the Atlantic if need be. NATO keeled over and died this week with the US administration’s dumping the war on UK’s desk. Trumpi doing a Lording over Zelenski is just Trumpi doing Trumpi shit. The money dried up; bring on the fat lady.

Posted by: comrade simba | Feb 9 2025 19:02 utc | 48

Posted by: Contrarian_Ed | Feb 9 2025 19:01 utc | 47
##############
Russia has set a precedent with the Donbass Republics and Crimea. A Transnistrian referendum is all that will be needed to leave Moldova to join Novorossiya.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 9 2025 19:10 utc | 50

Posted by: pyrrhus | Feb 9 2025 17:22 utc | 30
and drone and phone batteries

Posted by: UWDude | Feb 9 2025 19:27 utc | 52

Hey, where did all the trolls go?

Posted by: Mary | Feb 9 2025 19:43 utc | 54

Re: “rare earths” – Ukraine doesn’t have too many and the ones they do are in the east. Whoops. Also lithium is not a “rare earth.”
Posted by: Contrarian_Ed | Feb 9 2025 18:45 utc | 38
Re: “verbal” agreements on no NATO expansion, from Scott Horton’s book “Provoked”:

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the status of then-divided Germany soon became the center of attention. The Soviets of course were concerned. Approximately 27 million of their citizens had been killed in World War II, or the Great Patriotic War, as they call it.[41] After occupying half of the nation for 43 years, the USSR was now going to withdraw and even approve East Germany’s reunification with the West, as well as its integration into the American-led NATO alliance, which itself had been founded as an anti-Soviet (or Russian) bloc at the dawn of the last Cold War. As State Department officials wrote in 1990, keeping Europe in NATO and America in Europe was the Bush administration’s highest priority. “The U.S. should seek to transform NATO however needed so that NATO retains its primacy among other Europe-only structures,” they said. It was important to rally “the British, Italians and the smaller allies” to “press our interests . . . [and] to act as a balance to the larger powers of Europe, above all Germany.”[42]
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was opposed to German reunification. She told Irish Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, “I am sorry for Gorbachev. He doesn’t want German unity. Neither do I.”[43] The Bush administration resorted to going behind Thatcher’s back to get the rest of NATO on board, only letting her know after it was too late.[44]
Handshake Deals
The Soviets allowed reunification because the Allies had promised they would not expand NATO eastward, inside Germany or beyond. Of course, the various administrations and their partisans have lied about it since, at times claiming this pledge either never happened, or that it only ever applied to NATO forces within Germany, but not the rest of Eastern Europe—or does not count because it was not in writing.[45] But in 2017 and 2018, the records were posted at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.[46] Anyone can see that the notes taken by the American and allied side in the negotiations prove Russian claims about the verbal assurances from the West. The New York Times, which refused to cover the documents when they were published,[47] later shifted the goalposts. They now say that since it was not written in a formal treaty, there was no agreement at all.[48]
Likewise, NATO’s website insists that “[n]o such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claims has ever been produced.” Further, even if they would admit the truth, they say, “Personal assurances from individual leaders cannot replace Alliance consensus and do not constitute formal NATO agreement.”[49] But that just proves how disingenuous their position is. America and the Soviet Union made informal, spoken, handshake-type deals all the time during the first Cold War. One prominent example would be when President John F. Kennedy promised to remove American Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey—and implicitly Italy too—and never to invade Cuba again, in exchange for the removal of the USSR’s nukes from Cuba to defuse the Missile Crisis of 1962, one of the most crucial deals of the entire Cold War. For decades that agreement was secret and deniable, yet they still abided by it. Everyone now knows that is how the crisis ended.[50]
As scholar Joshua Shifrinson wrote, informal agreements regularly underlie the relationships between nation-states. “Put simply, explicit and codified arrangements are neither necessary nor sufficient for actors to strike deals and receive political assurances.” In another example, he noted that in the first Cold War, the 1970s unofficial alliance between the U.S. and China against the USSR was based on unwritten agreements. He added that many scholars noting the February 1990 meetings ignore or have missed other assurances given later that year and in 1991, and said, “[S]imply arguing that the U.S. position later changed is not sufficient to show that a non-expansion pledge was compromised.”[51]
Marc Trachtenberg, professor of political science at UCLA, similarly wrote that “no one really thinks that the words high officials utter do not commit them to anything until they are put into a signed agreement; if that were the case, meaningful exchanges between top officials would scarcely be possible.” He added that “otherwise purely verbal exchanges could not play anything like the role they do in international political life.” Trachtenberg wrote that in the strange case of the free half-city of West Berlin, wholly within Communist East Germany during the Cold War years,[52] the Soviets had promised to treat the deal they had made regarding Vienna, Austria, as also applying to Berlin, and the Americans then took them at their word. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted the agreement to be based on a handshake to avoid sending a signal of mistrust. That deal, struck in June 1945, lasted through the Cold War,[53] with the exception of the crises of 1948 and 1961.[54]
Bush
The Soviets had every reason to believe President Bush and his men meant what they said. There is no question their promises were the basis of the greatest and gravest decisions Soviet leaders made to withdraw their forces from Germany, and eventually, the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Jack Matlock, the second-to-last ambassador to the USSR, recalled what he believes was the first real assurance the U.S. gave the Soviets on the issue, and it came directly from the highest level. President Bush told Gorbachev at their meeting in Malta in December 1989 that “if the countries of Eastern Europe were allowed to choose their future orientation by democratic processes, the United States would not ‘take advantage’ of that process,” referring to their potential choice to leave the USSR or its alliance. Matlock continued, “Obviously, bringing countries into NATO that were then in the Warsaw Pact would be ‘taking advantage.’”[55] He also wrote that “[w]e gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev back when the Soviet Union existed that if a united Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward.”[56] Though the consensus, as President Bush put it, was that “the United States must and will remain a European power” after the Cold War,[57] the ambassador is adamant to this day that “there would have been no basis for the present crisis if there had been no expansion of the alliance following the end of the Cold War, or if the expansion had occurred in harmony with building a security structure in Europe that included Russia.”[58]

There is much more. So-called verbal or “handshake” deals are common in diplomacy and foreign policy. To pretend that this one (actually multiple instances on numerous occasions) not to expand NATO is somehow exempt is just another narrative trick of the financial elite in the West and their NATO mafia enforcer arm.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Feb 9 2025 20:01 utc | 56

Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 9 2025 16:50 utc | 27
“who the heck is going to live and mine in Greenland?”
There are mines in the Aussie outback, the Canadian tundra and just outside the Russian Arctic. There were coal mines on Svalbard, which is pretty bleak.
There are small geological camps scattered over Greenland wherever the surface ice isn’t too deep. They’re set up by mining companies.
https://govmin.gl/exploration-prospecting/get-an-exploration-licence/how-to-get-a-licence/

Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Feb 9 2025 20:21 utc | 58

Jerr@43….money is a great motivator and once you go below grade the temperature is constant. Fly in fly out jobs are common in the north, especially underground mines. Tunnel bore is an art these days….a little shotcrete and you’re off to the mineral deposits.
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Feb 9 2025 20:26 utc | 60

Eighthman | Feb 9 2025 16:50 utc | 27
who the heck is going to live and mine in Greenland?
Maybe adopt/adapt the Australian FIFO model.
Fly-in Fly-out. Big wages. Fly in, [to a remote mine at a barren hell-hot wasteland] work 12+ hour shifts, be provided with basic “dongas” of bed and ablutions. Chow house. Be there 10-14 days, fly back to Perth and spend spend spend. Have 10-14 days off…. Fly in… the lifestyle has made some very very very very cash-rich. Housing prices in Perth reflect this.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 9 2025 20:59 utc | 62

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Feb 9 2025 19:18 utc | 51
Some interesting thoughts; IMO this part:

My guess is the past 30ys of Empire of Chaos are ending to be transitioned into a lean focused MAGA March to War.
Trump isn’t going to end the Atlanticist war on Russia, he’s going to make a recalcitrant, craven Europe step up and handle the entire theater while the USA coordinates and militarily focuses on the West Asian and the Pacific theaters. Whatever “peace plan” is concocted and sold is only to effect this in the most efficient and timely way

faces an intractable problem, and that is the flabbiness, bloat and grift within the US MIC, which is geared towards designing and building weapon systems for profit, not functionality.
The US is going to find it difficult to intimidate the world with no defence against hypersonic anti-shipping missiles, or intimidate the world using a main strike aircraft with the performance ‘capabilities’ of the F-35, as just two examples.
Europe has no chance of stepping up to the plate in Ukraine, it is too ill-equipped materially, too poor financially and too divided politically.

Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Feb 9 2025 21:17 utc | 64

@Neofeudalfuture | Feb 9 2025 17:47 utc | 33
We disagree but I will explain my reasoning.
1. Russia will not have to fight NATO. Article 5 is voluntary and I doubt every NATO nation will send troops to a front. USA definitely won’t be providing troops. Trump is in the process of dumping the entire Ukraine fiasco on Europe with England taking a major role in Ukraine defense. I recommend looking into England, Germany, France, etc troop levels. Not impressive and they don’t have the infrastructure to transport troops/equipment to the front lines. The idea of a full on NATO assault was destroyed when the sanctions did not blow up the Russian economy. Everyone should have eliminated this threat from their speculations a long time ago, more so now since Biden lost the election. Trump may nuke Iran, but he will not nuke anyone who can/will strike back. Also, it is necessary to account for the sentiment of the NATO countries population. This would be the war nobody showed up for.
2. You cannot underestimate the impact drones have had on modern warfare. It is still in its infancy. Russia has begun using those robot dogs for reconnaissance, recovery and resupply. The aged axiom, “an army travels on its stomach” is in full effect in this arena. Russia is fighting in its own backyard and with the use of these drones, logistics problems have been significantly reduced, in costs, time and manpower. Also not to be discounted are the terminator tracked vehicles which are being used to clear areas, and I am certain their use (all drones) will expand.
3. Oreshnik is a game changer. 21 November 2024 was its first use. Shortly after, it was stated that Russia began mass production. It was stated that they could produce 30 missiles a month. So at this time they may have 60-90 Oreshniks ready for launch. I loaded up google earth and took a drive around the plant in Dnipro that it was used on. As you know, even today there are no pics available, a fact I find amazing. This is not a small facility. I was conservative in my estimates of the size of this plant, but it is between 1.2 and 2 square miles. I am pretty certain it is much larger. We don’t have any idea how much of the area was damaged, but I am using the 1.2 square miles measure in my speculations. That being said, good luck staging any troops within 3000 miles of an Oreshnik launch site.
4. I think Poland is probably one of the few in NATO that has an actual army. Fighting against slavs (IMO) is always a bad idea whether in a bar or on a battlefield. 🙂 Again though, between Oreshnik and the robot dogs, I doubt Poland would stand long should they ‘take Kaliningrad’. I feel this is a truly simple statement, because there is no consideration of how Russia would respond to a Polish invasion of Kalinigrad and you seem to accept that Poland could/would withstand nuclear strikes as a mere annoyance. (?) Personally, I don’t think Russia would ever fire the first nuke, but that is a bias of mine on display.
Now, aside from the battlefield. It is possible that Odessa need not be taken militarily, although it is certainly within Russian means to do so. It is possible that when Ukraine capitulates Russia will insist on a referendum in the remaining Ukraine controlled territories or becoming acquired through some other legalistic means. I don’t think Putin is going to leave Odessa to chance though, so Odessa will be taken militarily or conceded.
Kaliningrad is more tricky. I was surprised that Putin didn’t establish a corridor when Lithuania blocked access rather early on in the conflict. I am certain it will happen, but I don’t have a strategy for its accomplishment. My certainty is based on the fact that it doesn’t make sense to leave it exposed, where it would always be threatened and a threat re future conflicts. I think Putin is going to settle World War II once and for all so Europe/Russia has a strong security arrangement that will preclude another war for generations to come. Consolidating Russian territories makes sense in this regard and I just cannot imagine Putin leaving a Russian territory exposed. Refer back to his Dec 2021 letter to EU and NATO leaders for reasons to support this stance.
I also consider that once Ukraine collapses, Russia may decide it need not exist any longer and return some current Ukraine territories to Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania to take the sting out of however Russia gets the land corridor to Kaliningrad, because again, I don’t see Putin leaving it exposed.
To close, you must take USA out of any equation with regard to Ukraine. We have bigger problems and NATO/EU are going to have to settle with Russia among themselves. We might send what little ammo we have left, but don’t count on US support unless Russia attacks Israel, NATO and EU are headed to FAFO land.
Lastly, I believe this is a spiritual war, and Trump and Putin are unknowingly on the same side.
Take care,
b4real

Posted by: b4real | Feb 9 2025 21:29 utc | 66

Everyone includes the Germans, Brits, French, and Poles in the AFU numbers.
Oh, and the Americans and Canadians.
It’s not AFU losses, they are NATO losses, which matters most at the officer level, as those are a scarce resources which are difficult to replace.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 9 2025 15:54 utc | 22
And in the RF side it includes Wagner , proper and prisoner battalions, local oblast militias (and North Koreans 😉 ) Maybe 10% of the total, maybe more)
On the AFU side you forgot the non-nato mercs, but would be surprised if those non-AFU reach 5%
And you mention well that officers count, but I would go further and expand to seasoned veterans, AFU has lost most of that core, things can only get worse.
Officers are hard to replace, experience you cannot replace (not without coherent healthy units where you can rotate in the newbies until they mature without getting stupidly killed)

Posted by: Newbie | Feb 9 2025 21:31 utc | 68

This mining stuff gets tiresome, whether Ukraine or Greenland. Mines typically invest huge sums over years, sustaining losses and then suffer if their commodity prices go down. I think most of them are poor investments,
Posted by: Eighthman | Feb 9 2025 16:50 utc | 27

In a unipolar world, if the Hegemon can control the trade routes, print the reserve currency and buy anything from anywhere, there is no point in mining or manufacturing as economic activities. But, that world is dying. Lacking the military means to compel rivals to use their reserve currency, the belligerent West is in real trouble. Suddenly, their printing press will no longer guarantee an inflow of raw materials and manufactured goods. Eurasia + East Asia can become an autarchy, the West is no longer needed. If the West can’t develop their own mining and manufacturing within what remains of their sphere of influence, they are doomed to an irreversible decline.

Posted by: Drifter | Feb 9 2025 21:39 utc | 70

Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 9 2025 20:59 utc | 62
Good points but I suspect cold is a bit harder to deal with. Moving from donga to chop house in northern WA needs only a pair of thongs (flip flops), shorts and a singlet. The evenings can be spent drinking in the open watching the sun set. In Greenland you would need full on cold weather gear and dongas would be too flimsy to keep out the cold.

Posted by: watcher | Feb 9 2025 21:43 utc | 72

Posted by: chunga | Feb 9 2025 15:30 utc | 16
“I have no problem saying USAID ain’t going away. It’s just under new management and what we’re seeing now is just a witch hunt.”
I disagree. The whole point of taking an axe to USAID is budgetary. It was the most outrageous Deep State slush fund and the only programs not cut are critical aid, food and medicine. All of the nation building/color revolution/gayification efforts are dead.

Posted by: Paranaense | Feb 9 2025 22:10 utc | 74

USAID, like the CPFB, are mechanism to fund all sorts of Moonbat “Progressive” initiatives ala Soros.
Like how every US budget since Obama has been a CR, and no real budget is ever created or voted upon.
In proper countries, politicians hang from lamp posts for a fraction of the graft that has become daily life in America.
I don’t see many Americans who are too mad about it. It’s hard to feel sorry for them, certainly since many of their political heroes (on either side) profited from it.
Everything finds its level with enough time. That is how the Easterners tend to view things.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Feb 9 2025 22:16 utc | 76

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Feb 9 2025 19:18 utc | 51
The best picture thinking I have seen on here regarding the current situation. My guess is your assessment won’t be that far off. Karlof has been describing something similar for a long time now.
They are absolutely terrified of BRICS. What they do from here on in is try and stop it.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Feb 9 2025 22:35 utc | 78

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Feb 9 2025 22:16 utc | 77
But the European ruling classes are far from united among themselves, let alone actually having the ironmongery necessary to go to war.
Do not make the mistake of envisaging Europe as a coherent whole, when put under financial and economic stress ancient antagonisms and hostilities will re-emerge.

Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Feb 9 2025 22:57 utc | 80

So-called verbal or “handshake” deals are common in diplomacy and foreign policy. To pretend that this one (actually multiple instances on numerous occasions) not to expand NATO is somehow exempt is just another narrative trick of the financial elite in the West and their NATO mafia enforcer arm.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Feb 9 2025 20:01 utc | 56
History teaches that the yankees never ever respected their words, written or not written, signed or not signed.
And it was completely stupid to think only one second that they can be any change in the future.

Posted by: Naive | Feb 9 2025 23:09 utc | 82

Trump is owned by Musk and Musk is a crook and a fascist of the mussolinian kind. He wants all the available money for his personal projects.

Posted by: Naive | Feb 9 2025 23:11 utc | 84

Why does NATO never learn from past mistakes? They’ve learned nothing from the 2023 Cuckster-offensive. They lost again, according to Dima. There are hundreds of destroyed pieces of equipment, and dead NATO soldiers being left to rot without recovering their dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7N8FLh3W74

Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Feb 9 2025 23:29 utc | 86

The Civil War was never about slavery as a moral issue, rather it was a headcount dispute as to whether a slave counted as 2/3 of a man or a whole one for the purposes of Federal disbursements. The South wanted them to be counted as ‘whole’ men despite the limitations on civil and voting rights.
Posted by: ChatNPC | Feb 9 2025 23:10 utc | 83
Maybe, but consider also the abolition and civil war was about taking away the advantage southern states had over northern states with regard to the cheap slave labour, giving them an unfair advantage over northern businesses.

Posted by: HERMIUS | Feb 9 2025 23:53 utc | 88

Trump and Musk are two dogs pissing on the same tree. That always ends in a dog fight.
Posted by: too scents | Feb 9 2025 23:35 utc | 87

You have an old dog who can’t learn new tricks and a dog still in his prime who is wealthier by orders of magnitude. The fight is over already. POTUS 47 can still piss on toy poodles like Macron and Trudeau, but he also knows how to be submissive. Just look at his behaviour with the PM of IS, the POTUS acted like a servant.

Posted by: Drifter | Feb 10 2025 0:02 utc | 90

Dima says that the Ukrainians have been totally defeated near Sudzha, with a road of death leading back to Sumy.

Posted by: vargas | Feb 10 2025 0:05 utc | 92

Posted by: Naive | Feb 9 2025 23:09 utc | 82
A few things:
* The US not being “agreement capable” indeed is a long-term reality. But it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if it was “in writing” or not.
* The same can be said of Perfidious Albion.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Feb 10 2025 0:22 utc | 94

Military Summary channel says the latest failed AFU offensive was 4 – 6 months worth of Nato AFV production wiped out in a few days.
Now AFU can no longer attack. They can send more troops to replace losses and stabilize situation, but very unlikely they can attack.

Posted by: unimperator | Feb 10 2025 0:49 utc | 96

AFU is sending continuous convoys from Sumy toward Sudzha, RUAF is conducting continuous interceptions with drones and bombs. In recent days they also bombed heavily the staging area NE of Sumy town. The losses for AFU trying to supply and reinforces Sudzha must be high.

Posted by: unimperator | Feb 10 2025 0:52 utc | 98

Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 9 2025 21:38 utc | 69
I think Trump will leave Zelensky out for the wolves. In fact it’s already happening in Ukraine – all the old Nuland/USAID/Blinken darlings of Ukraine have no more protection and are being dragged into scandals, courts and eventually prisons.
When foreign aid money stops coming, that is when the nazis start rioting and kill Zelensky. Because Zelensky literally has ONE job, to get money from outside. And he isn’t doing well.

Posted by: unimperator | Feb 10 2025 0:56 utc | 100