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What don't you understand about the difference between objectively confirmable evidence and claims backed only by suspicions?

Sure. Putin lost a huge amount of materiel as well as many elite troops, just as a kind of feint. And lots of generals and intelligent agents got punished afterwards because of the good job they did in reporting about what kind of reception the Russian army would receive on its advance towards Kiiv. It is to laugh.

I don't understand. You won't take the word of an anonymous poster on thaivisa who is clearly unwilling and/or unable to provide objectively confirmable evidence of his claims?

I don't know about Zelensky being unprepared, whatever that means, but Ukraine was certainly prepared. If it wasn't prepared enough it was only for want of materiel. Clearly in training and strategy, its military is far in advance of the Russians.

As I already pointed out to you elsewhere, one of the big stumbling blocks was the clause in Minsk 2 that prohibited outside nations from intervening in the conflict. Russia denied that it was intervening in the conflict therefore it was irrelevant in their case. And most reports on the outcome of the Minsk agreements assign varying levels of blame to both sides.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush got into a lot of trouble just for trying to pull some illegal arms sales shenanigas on a very small scale. To contend, without evidence, that a 40 billion dollar foreign aid deal is really a sale, is obviously nonsense. What's more, NATO's interests are in a strong Ukrainian economy that can discourage Russian aggression. Saddling it with a huge amount of debt would be self-defeating.

I guess the Finns, the Swedes, the Baltic States, etc are all anti-European?

Being a bit premature aren't you. The influx of advanced western weaponry has mostly yet to make its presence felt. Russia, despite what it's current huge materiel advantage, is making very very slow progress. If that's the best they can do with what they've got, what happens when they're opposed by superior armaments?

If Ukraine was so unprepared, how is it that they stopped the Kiev offensive dead in its tracks? Ya think it was all last-minute improvisation?

There was a piece of legislation passed by both houses of congress and signed into law by the President that clearly designates that it's the United States that is paying for weapons and services, not the Ukraine. The US has a long history of foreign aid. Sometimes it's loans, sometimes its donations and sometimes both. But in this case it's all grants. Of course, if you have any actual evidence to cite, please share it with us. And no, reflexive, evidence free cynicism is not evidence.

Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that. You have to click your heels 3 times and say "Please."

As virtually all economists agree, one of the 2 overwhelming factors that influences how much trade nations due with each other is distance . (The other is the size of the economy) The closer nations are to each other, the more trade there will be between them. The technical term that economists use for this economic fact is gravity. No amount of trade any of the large economies open to freer trading (so that rules out India and China) is going to make much of a difference. Unless the PM is in possession of some magical potion, nothing he can do will defy the law of gravity. Gravity model of trade The gravity model of international trade in international economics is a model that, in its traditional form, predicts bilateral trade flows based on the economic sizes and distance between two units. Research shows that there is "overwhelming evidence that trade tends to fall with distance."[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_model_of_trade Gravity Without Apology: the Science of Elasticities, Distance and Trade Gravity as both fact and theory is one of the great success stories of recent research on international trade, and has featured prominently in the policy debate over Brexit. We first review the facts, noting the overwhelming evidence that trade tends to fall with distance. https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/130/628/880/5815071?redirectedFrom=fulltext THE GRAVITY EQUATION IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE: AN EXPLANATION The gravity equation in international trade is one of the most robust empirical finding in economics: bilateral trade between two countries is proportional to size, measured by GDP, and inversely proportional to the geographic distance between them. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19285/w19285.pdf

First off, quit the nonsense about the "fake Russian hoax". It was a Senate Committee, headed by Republicans, that issued a report that said there was good evidence of a collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign committee. It specifically cited Paul Manafort Second, the Mueller report stated that there were very clear grounds for obstruction of justice. (But the Justice Dept.'s official position is that sitting Presidents can't be prosecuted. Which is why the Mueller report suggest a different venue for adjudicating whether or not Trump as guilty of obstruction) For instance, Trump not ruling out pardons for people suspected of colluding with the Russians. Like Paul Manafort for instance. And, oddly enough, Trump actually did pardon Manafort and others who could have knowledge of said collusion. No President has ever coming close to the extent of abusing the power to pardon in the self-interested way Trump did.

Feeling nostalgic much? Or has there just been a drastic shortage over the past several years of excuses "to disrupt, main, and kill"{?

I do wonder how many more artillery shells Russia has.

But the majority of justices on the Supreme Court were nominated by Republican Presidents and approved by Republican Senate. And they are pursuing an agenda that favors interests traditionally allied with Republicans.

Actually, early in his career he did do some great complicated projects. Although, his father was still there to help him But as time went by he became more and more impulsive. His deals for the Casinos, the Plaza, the Trump shuttle were way too high priced. He got out-negotiated.

Well, for one thing, he used bankruptcy law to protect him from the consequences of his bad decisions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/29/trump-went-broke-but-stayed-on-top/e1685555-1de7-400c-99a8-9cd9c0bca9fe/ Also he got really lucky. The Apprentice came along and changed for everything for him. It sold the world on the idea that Trump was a great businessman.

You have such amazingly bad luck to listen to radio reports that never actually make it to a news organization's websites. In this case, I searched LBC for any mention of this story and found none. Why do you think those aliases are significant? One is a handle he uses on twitter. No proof that he's been fighting under a false name. As for the mercenary work that Aslin is alleged to have done, I see that he fought with the Kurds against the Syrian govt, a Russian ally. He made no secret of the fact and very publicly protested the lack of support that Kurds had received. . After that he went to fight for Ukraine. You see a pattern there? Let me give you a hint. He's no friend of oppressive governments. I have found no evidence of him being a mere gun for hire. And neither have you.

You really don't know about Trump's repeated business failures? Honestly? How can someone even formulate a rational opinion about Trump's sense of judgement if they don't know this? https://www.thoughtco.com/donald-trump-business-bankruptcies-4152019 https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-airline-shuttle-transportation-pan-am-eastern-new-york-2019-1 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/donald-trump-truth-social-disaster https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-organization-used-borrow-major-banks-now-look-lending-money-rcna22068 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-tax-evasion-politics-0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67

Cheney: Trump Never Called Military to Defend U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 – But Pence Did Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said that it was former Vice President Mike Pence, not former President Donald Trump, who called for the military to defend the U.S. Capitol during the riot... She said Mr. Trump did not call his Secretary of Defense on Jan. 6, or speak to his Attorney General or the Department of Homeland Security. “Trump gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day, and made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” Ms. Cheney said https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearings-news-live/card/cheney-trump-never-called-military-to-defend-u-s-capitol-on-jan-6-but-pence-did-js5yUaivfa2Yz5QCZ77p

Donald Trump is definitely not a master negotiator despite what The Apprentice may have led you to believe. Once his father was out of the picture, Trump destroyed his business. In other ventures,Trump consistently overpaid for various assets. He was consistently taken to the cleaners in negotiations. Keep in mind that his father transferred to him about half a billion dollars which all evaporated. It was The Apprentice that saved him and gave people the false idea of his negotiating skills. As for Trump being responsible for energy independence, how does that work? Fracking flourished and grew under the Obama administration. Not that Obama or any President would deserve much credit for that. It was a technological breakthrough that was responsible.

You consider an attempt to halt a crucial step in the peaceful transfer of power in a democratic republic a minor matter? You think that a crowd that had just chanted that the person in charge of the process should be hanged and was roaming the halls of Congress is a minor matter?

Imagine what would happen if the Chinese govt had allowed its population to be vaccinated with superior vaccines from the West.

Really? Let me share something with you about Minsk 2 " A major blockage has been Russia's insistence that it is not a party to the conflict and therefore is not bound by its terms. Point 10, for example, calls for the withdrawal of all foreign armed formations and military equipment from the two disputed regions, Donetsk and Luhansk: Ukraine says this refers to forces from Russia, but Moscow denies it has any forces there." https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-are-minsk-agreements-ukraine-conflict-2022-02-21/