H/T Scissorhead Fran
While the U.N. Security Council was meeting to avert war, loud explosions were heard outside Kyiv as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin announced that his military is disarming Ukraine but not, you know, taking it over. The attack began at dawn (local time), and was not limited to Donbas —the alleged break-away region— so clearly, Putin has much broader aspirations than just the separatist region he said he was “liberating.”
“We now have war in Europe of a scale and a type that we thought belonged to history.”
—Nato’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg
Vladimir Putin, Soviet KGB agent to his very core, wants to rebuild as much of the old Soviet empire as he can.
And as far as I can tell, that is the state of play. We’ll update this post today as warranted.
Mock Paper Scissors 
Since Republicans don’t wear uniforms, here’s how you know which team they’re on. Those who are cheering this in public are the ones Putin has kompromat on. Those cheering in private are Dick Cheney, and his merry band of war profiteers.
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An aging tyrant, hoping to die as a new Tsar, reigning over a renewed Russian hegemony. Vlad the Terrible…
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Did Randy Newman have a point?
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If I lived in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, I would be very very nervous right about now; I think Putin believes he can poke NATO as hard as he wants, and dare us to go Article 5 on him.
IMO this is a colossal failure of NATO not admitting Ukraine when they asked in the very beginning….it might have prevented the siezure of Crimea, and the stoking of separatist movements back when it could have meant Russia would back down.
I have zero doubt Putin is willing to go all Kruschev Cuban Missile crisis and dare the West to do something.
And Xi is watching verrrry closely to see what we do, because they’ll annex Taiwan in a heartbeat if Putin gets away with it.
I have a really horrible ‘September 1939 deja vu’ feeling about this.
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Xi is watching because China leases a big chunk of Ukrainian land for farming. I’m sure Lili-Putin got permission before starting his war.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-china-leases-farmland/25114812.html
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A non-reading low-info dumbass in FL thinks the US is engaged in an amphibious assault;
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/02/trump-tells-laura-ingraham-rigged-election
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He thought when someone mentioned Donbass that they were insulting him.
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So likely to be correct.
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There aren’t bread lines forming yet in Moscow, but the people there are extremely worried…
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I saw commentary earlier about kicking Russia our of SWIFT over this. It would couse significant pain to the EU (as EU banks hold about $30 billion of Russian debt, and kicking them our would make it nearly impossible to get debt payments) but that would cause an immediate bunch of hurt on Russia.
On the gallows humor side, I heard some CNN or MSNBC talking head speaking to former Col. Vindman and he said something about ‘This is waking Germany from their deep slumber towards militarizing again’ and ALL I could think of was :
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