Thread Reader

Mea Culpa, I was wrong. I really thought Russia calling up 300k reserves in the first wave of mobilization meant Russia was calling up 300k men who had recently served or had specialist skills. Nope, turns out its just a giant ethnic cleansing operation in Russia's Asian oblasts.

I mean how else do you describe raiding college classrooms, ethnic Armenian participation at 90% while ethnic Russian neighbors are single digit, and some villages having lost 25% or more of their men? About the only ethnic Russian's finding themselves in this fiasco are those
who showed up at the protests which at this point look like recruitment drives to further isolate average Russians in Moscow and St Petersburg from the war wrecking the rest of the country. So, yea 300k "reserves" is as legit as the sham referenda that started today. My apologies
for thinking Russia would do something militarily rational. Speaking of rationality, Medvedev laid it all out on the table: Russia will use strategic nuclear weapons to keep its stolen lands and people. So thats a direct threat to me and my homeland. Thankfully the US said it
continue to support and supply Ukraine. Great public statement, I wonder what is going on behind the scenes? Wonder if leaves are getting cancelled yet for bomber and submarine crews? I bet NATO assets are going to be looking really hard for tells that would indicate Russia is
prepping for national suicide. I will say, I think of the CBRN/NBC threats, the CB part is probably the least likely. Russia had 40k tons of the stuff and began destroying it in 2002 (with Western funding) and had reached the 85% mark by 2015 armscontrol.org/act/2017-11/ne…
so that stockpile has likely been incinerated. Plus Syria shows that gas is just an impediment to military operations not a silver bullet. On the biologic side, even Putin or perhaps especially Putin is not going to release another global pandemic. Giant tables anyone? Dude is a
germaphobe and he knows that once released biological pathogens go where they will. He lives in Moscow not Racoon City. That leaves the R and the N. He has been fliting with a radiological disaster a few times in this war, but it doesn't really serve a military purpose, not when
you are flooding the zone with untrained conscripts. Of course post nuclear everything is a radiological disaster. That leaves nukes. Someone like @Jayson Geroux might be the better source of info but running off memory as an enlisted soldier the big thing for us with nuclear
defense was distance. Distance from your buddies so you were a less inviting target in the first place and then distance from the blast. Nukes afterall are merely giant explosive devices with some secondary after-effects but the physics of the destruction is pretty straight
forward even if the scale if vastly different. Troops inside AFV's or in foxholes and bunkers not inside the blast radius will still be able to fight. For the Soviet's this was not a problem, they trained to drive through the blast zone. The whole reason the BMP-1 was invented
too allow infantry to fight inside of a nuclear wasteland. Anyone think college students from Yakutia who still can't march instep can pull that one off? That leaves the sheer shock, awe and terror of the weapons. That is probably what Putin would do. Not really dangerous to the
Ukrainian army that probably doesn't have the on the ground force density... but a Ukrainian city.... Whats the difference other than time between rubblizing a city with HE vs nukes? This is where Western resolve is important. If Putin thinks he can get away with it, he might pop
cork. If he knows that popping means war he may well refrain or be forced to refrain. So to my elected leaders @Senator John Boozman, @Tom Cotton, and @French Hill tell #POTUS to stand strong and make US resolve known and to make sure #NATO is resolved as well. For the rest of us left
staring at Armageddon, all we can do is keep on keeping on. Assuming you have a family plan for normal disasters and are not going to be caught completely flat footed anyway. If you don't, well build one. The plans for nukes isn't much different that hurricane, fire, earthquake
or ice storm. Also keep giving, nukes or no Ukraine still needs our help and charities like @Mriya Aid and units like the @Georgian Legion are still doing vital work. Promote Ukrainian voices into the spaces you inhabit. 3 of my favorites and oft mentioned are @✙ Constantine ✙,
@Viktor Kovalenko and @Sergey Mohov ✙. Listen in to @Mriya Report where BTW you can hear more Ukrainian voices like @Ferlain and @Slava Ukraini ✙ and otherwise keep the faith. This isn't the height of the cold war where 40K nukes were ready to fly. I am not sure how many of Russia's much
reduced arsenal are deployed and of them how many wont just fizzzle. It might be a small sliver if things go atomically pear shaped, but our species will survive. Until Ukraine wins on Ukraine's terms: Slava Ukraini!
@Thread Reader App unroll please
Raver: NAFO's official polemist, Slava Ukraini!
Truck driver, 4x4 enthusiast, former wrecker driver, SAR worker, and US Army Cold War vet. use to go by Zraver, don't want to be associated with the Russian Z
Follow on Twitter
Missing some tweets in this thread? Or failed to load images or videos? You can try to .