Ukraine

Putin's announcing that he has put his nuclear forces on some sort of higher alert is strange. Raising your level of alert ("Defcon" in the US vernacular) is one way that the US and Russia used to indicate increasing concern with each other and raising the stakes. But Ukraine doesn't have any nuclear weapons so what good does it do to tell them that your nuclear forces are on "higher alert"? If you were going to use them, you'd just use them. There is nothing to be gained by incrementally rattling that sword.

Invading a foreign country and then using nukes is so over the top that no one - even China - could rationalize it. It makes that part of the country where you have used nukes uninhabitable for one thing, and it makes you such an international pariah that no one will deal with you economically or otherwise. Obviously Ukraine isn't worth it.

So why does he announce an obvious bluff? It makes me think that maybe those recent reports reports are true that this operation is not going anywhere near as smoothly as he had anticipated and he's desperately trying to get Ukraine to fold and the West to back off. Condoleeza Rice has speculated that even though he has always been "calculating and cold" maybe he is also getting unstable.........................Luca

There's is some serious BS going on here.

The Ukraine outlets seem to be engaging in some "all is well" propaganda.



This guy is an embedded Fox correspondent.

Yep... Only they'd be on the other side

There's just a ton of propaganda streaming from both (and maybe more) sides of this fight. And the same people in the media who have lied about virtually everything for the past decade are now telling me how I should feel about a very complex situation over 6,000 miles away that doesn't involve immediate U.S. security interests?

I don't know enough to weigh in and am sitting this one out for now. 

What I can say is that almost every dominant media narrative since 2015 has turned out to be close to the exact opposite of the truth--which someone much wiser than me once said "is the first casualty of war."

I'm somewhat siding with Credo on this one.

What I feel reasonably confident about is...

Russia invaded the Ukraine.
Ukrainians are fighting back
Most of the other countries have condemned it.
Some sanctions are being levied.

The details about all that are sketchy at best.