Finland and Sweden are moving ahead on separate tracks to quickly move ahead to join NATO.
Finland had indicated it would prefer a solution that would see the two Nordic unaligned states “jump together” into NATO.
Sweden is looking at a range of enhanced security-related options, including deepening Nordic defense cooperation and urging the European Union to develop enhanced defense policies to offer greater military protection to EU member states that border the highly sensitive Baltic Sea and High North regions.
The Finnish government has set the wheels in motion to fast-track its application to join NATO. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin expects a decision on NATO membership soon. Finland is expected to reach a decision on joining NATO before the Alliance’s two-day summit meeting slated to commence in Madrid on June 29.
The Swedish government is expected to deliver its National Security Report to the Riksdag, the country’s legislature, before May 31.
Russia has threatened to deploy new nuclear weapons if Sweden and Finland join NATO. This is all Russia has left. Russia’s conventional military is getting dismantled in Ukraine. Russia just has nuclear weapon threats. But Russia cannot back it up because any actual use of nuclear weapons would be their assured destruction or a decapitive strike. The war in Ukraine has shown that US and NATO missiles and weapons are vastly superior. Russia is a paper bear, but an aggressive and belligerent one.
Deploying more nuclear weapons is relatively meaningless.
I, Putin, am going to put this right here. Watch me do it. Are you scared? I can’t use it but I am moving my weapons around. I already have 2000 of them and I can already launch them around the world. But maybe I will make 100 more or 1000 more and put them in forward positions. Roar. What are you going to do shoot me a conventional gun? Shoot me with precision-guided conventional missile? Like that will kill me. I ride around shirtless on horses. I am going to keep doing crazy things and getting more of my military killed. They will keep dying until I win. Fear me as my tanks are destroyed and my navy sinks.
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And also, a lot of interviews of the local citizens from Mariupol (who are largely pro-Russian), who tell horror stories of being used as human shields and of other atrocities — motivate Russians as well.
Speaking of morale of Russian troops, after the shocking videos of treatment of Russian POWs by Ukrainian teroborona (civilian defense) and Azov groups, the morale became higher still — as even more Russians now believe that the fight is against brutal monsters. And the famous "old couple with Soviet flag in Ukraine" video did even more to lift Russian patriotism. To the point that now Russian voenkomats are full of volunteers for the war effort. At least, that's what I'm reading from Russian forums.
There is misunderstanding going on.
Other than the tactical nuke issue, I've never seen Putin stating that he's afraid of NATO invasion, *per se*. He did voice his strong concern, with regard to Ukraine, that — should Ukraine be accepted into NATO — his options with regard to defense against likely hostile Ukraine will be limited. Specifically, should the Ukraine decide to take Crimea back, they'll have the backing of the NATO block. One could argue whether Crimea is Russian or Ukrainian, but one has to accept two things as true (research is welcome):
1) There is 90%+ Russian and pro-Russian population in Crimea.
2) The neo-Nazi/ultra-nationalist element in the Ukrainian politics, military, and police force has an outsize influence on the internal politics and policymaking in the country, predisposing it towards ill-treatment of those who represent "hostile populations." The Donbas War that has been going since 2014 is a strong illustration, with 14K dead. The recent events in Mariupol, with locals telling horrific stories of being used as human shields and other things, support it further.
In other words, Putin isn't afraid of "democratic well-off Ukraine" — of which Ukraine is neither, alas. What Putin is afraid of is cultural and political hegemony of the West, which will use Ukraine as a lever, to wiggle itself into internal affairs of Russia. He has seen the Harvard-led carpetbaggery of the "wild 90s" and he knows that this can come back with a vengeance.
Once understood, the System must be destroyed.
Exactly. It worked so well with the Sudetenland… It bought us almost a year of peace!
VPN? Take winnings in gold?
Sure, to do that we only need to give him Eastern Europe. I'm sure those countries will take one for the team. Right? The only way to "de-escalate" is for Vlad to fall on some bullets in the shower. ed:clarity
Interesting analysis!
Wait, I thought there were already nukes in Kaliningrad though? Is he simply threatening to put a greater variety of them there now?
Ireland getting nuked would spoil your payout. US IP addresses are suddenly cut out from betting. Not sure when this occurred.
Where can we place bets? How do we know Paddy Power can cover those bets?
I don't want WW3. This conflict needs to be de-escalated and defused. Nobody should be engaging in any game of chicken where nuclear-armed powers are involved.
Paddy Power has it at 6:1 odds Putin gets whacked* by his military leadership before the insane release of nuclear weapons occurs.
* Mafioso elimination of problem speak
About what *who* did? More to the point, which of the three being discussed is the closest to realizing he is neurotic?
I think you missed the second paragraph.
So, increase production. That all? You seem to have lost the question somewhere.
Would have made a concerted effort to increase US hydrocarbon production which diminishes Putin using oil/gas as leverage and makes invasion of Ukraine seem less viable.
Putin miscalculated but maybe if Biden hadn't been signaling weakness via environmental policies, Afghan withdrawal debacle, Iran negation weakness and a difficult economic environment due to inflation… then Putin may have not made his move.
We'll obviously never know but Biden has telegraphed an awful lot of "we are not in a good position to stand up to you" vibes.
Pootie Poot should always be identified as mentally ill. The perception of mental illness in a leader, even an absolute monarch, has been quite successful in leading to *accidental* drownings of said should-have-been-a-patient, that sort of thing.
As I have said before, the likelihood is that an order to use nukes will be met by multiple assassination attempts by those Putin has left who are *close* to him, and thus directly know he is a mentally ill power addict about to go even more cwazy.
Is Putin a mentally ill power addict, like the wittle baby who is top doggie in china?
Socialists, left wing or right, are mentally ill power addicted neurotics. All mentally healthy people are libertarian. Do you have any idea what the *other* winner of the election would do? Let us know, so we will know too!
Non-European NATO nations cannot make decisions regarding putinhead that may result in putinhead launching a nuclear strike against, say, Berlin, Paris or London. The western NATO nations will likely be able to fend off an attack and destroy putinland in the process. It is the European NATO nations, because they are close to putinland, that will bear the brunt of a putinhead nuclear onslaught. The European NATO nations need to decide if they will accept such a loss or live under the continued putinhead advancement supported by his threat to use nuclear weapons or face off with him now. Speaking for myself, but not as a European, I would not choose to live under that ongoing threat and would face off with putinhead now.
Assuming most Russians never bought the "de-nazification" story and always recognized that Putin intended to strengthen Russia's defensive position, the news of Sweden and Finland joining NATO should send a pretty clear message that Putin's war is having an effect opposite of his intent.
Longer term though, NATO needs to shift focus away from "defense against Russia" to "mutual peace enforcement". That is, if Russia eventually backs off from Ukraine AND Russia goes through one of its periodic chaos periods and ends up somewhat more democratic, it ought to be admitted to NATO. That gets Russia the protection it wants from NATO members, but requires it to cease its periodic aggressions against neighbors.
Not a perfect solution, but better than MAD alone, especially if Russia goes into another big economic decline (as a result of the war and sanctions) that makes it even more desperate and paranoid.
Both morale and logistics may get better now that they're focusing on the East, right across the Russian border.
… And Russia has indicated that in this case it will move it's nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad. Pretty sure that we are going to hear more about Russia's nuclear capabilities as we get more involved in the Ukraine war. We need to have a very good plan in order to deal with this. This is a very complicated conflict and it is going to come out eventually.
Putin is a bully. Most people learn how to handle them in elementary school. Obviously joe did not. He was stupid before he was senile, and obviously an habitual lier. No one believes him now…..not even Putin! Well maybe a few demented Dems.
Putin and his followers still haven't puzzled out why all those former Warsaw pack members joined NATO almost overnight the moment grimy Soviet boots came off their throats.
3. Putin is barely in charge and insane. Almost none of his senior staff are totally loyal; most will flip quickly. Almost no influential people are loyal; many will flip quickly. The minority of the population is uninformed but most are generally anti-Putin. This is optimistic. Russia will accelerate toward a major disruption with new institutions and increased productivity in the next few years. Glasnost and Perestroika will have nothing on the changes about to occur. Likely widspread economic chaos but not too bloody. Russia may need to broken up and de-nuclearized (weapons).
3. Putin is barely in charge and insane. Almost none of his senior staff are totally loyal; most will flip quickly. Almost no influential people are loyal; many will flip quickly. The minority of the population is uninformed but most are generally anti-Putin. This is optimistic. Russia will accelerate toward a major disruption with new institutions and increased productivity in the next few years. Glasnost and Perestroika will have nothing on the changes about to occur. Likely widspread economic chaos but not too bloody. Russia may need to broken up and de-nuclearized (weapons) this decade.
LOL @ Russia!
KA-52 sorties are down ~90% in the last two weeks vs the first week of the war.
Not "just" hardware. But that's certainly a component of it.
The problem of Russia army is software (training, organizing and tactics), not hardware (weapons)
"Binkov's Battlegrounds" on YouTube makes the case that two of the many Russian problems in Ukraine are morale and logistics.
Many Russian troops do not want to fight in Ukraine but in the case of an invasion of Russia then they would likely be more motivated to fight. Also Russia would expect to use their railways to get heavy equipment and other materiel to their troops.
But in Ukraine they have had to rely on trucks which get bogged down in the mud so have to use the roads and bridges leading to long, stalled convoys.
So just as Putin underestimated the Ukrainian military we should not dismiss the Russian military so easily as a joke.
Having said all that NATO has no plans to invade Russia and would never get the necessary parties to agree to do this. So Russian paranoia has no basis in reality.
Actually China is more likely to invade Russia to get back their territory in Vladivostok.
Putin was warned if he invaded Ukraine he might get more NATO and that is what is happening.
Of course Putin the liar says he has no intentions of invading any other countries in Europe, but nobody believes anything Putin says anymore.
So Putin the bully resorts to threats.
If NATO weapons are vastly superior. Why number of helicopters and aircrafts Russia lost down to almost zero in recent weeks when more and more NATO weapons were shipped to Ukraine?
Only a matter of time now, Putin had to go
“All In”, someone better whack him before he pushed the wrong button.
Best case is a “new” Russia comes out of this mess and then joins NATO.
The Russian arguments are truly laughable. They are the only nation with nuclear weapons in the Baltic sea and they are already deployed. The range of their missiles already covers Scandinavia (from ships and Kaliningrad) so there is not much they can do to escalate.
Finland is resolute. The best they can do is to play on their influencers within the Swedish Social democrats who sit in power. They have a long history of Soviet relationships and have always been against the USA.
The current situation causes serious cognitive dissonance within the party and they would surely like to do what they do best – start a long and slow investigation about NATO membership scheduled to produce some output in 2024 for further processing. Problem is, that was already done several times (last one in 2016). This time, NATO membership will probably happen. If not for other reasons, economic.
Sweden currently spends about 1.2% GDP on defense.
NATO requirement is 2%
For Sweden, 5 – 6% is estimated as a level needed for a credible independent defense. NATO is therefore less expensive.
The large Swedish island Gotland in the Baltic is the main strategic spot and a primary target for Russia. It is said that the one who owns Gotland controls the Baltic and its airspace. The Nordstream1 (and 2) gas pipelines now causing all the angst in Germany pass by outside Gotland. Russia has repeatedly tried to gain ownership of the large harbor (Slite) in Gotland. They almost made it.