Putin thinks he can shoot a man on Khreshchatyk and he won't pay much of a price for it.

Most Americans don't even care if our own democracy is in peril, the Europeans need the fuel and their are plenty of powerful leaders around the world are openly rooting for him.

Thanks to the Greens ... Both here and in Canada ...

In fact, he provided zero evidence to support his claims, which is why I used the terms "fact-free" and "specious".

But your attempts to defend Trump are even more hilarious.  First of all, the "Trump administration" did not kill the Russian mercenaries in Syria, the American military did.  They did this after they were attacked - Trump did not order it and there was no option other than allow themselves to be killed.  It was not a decision made by Putin's puppet.

As far as sanctions, they were already in place when he took office.  The few sanctions during Trump's term were after Congress passed the sanctions with an overwhelming, bipartisan, veto-proof majority.  It would have been embarassing for Trump to try to veto them and it would've been easily overridden.

Trump did permit the sale of $39 million of weapons to Ukraine.  Oddly enough, however, they restricted them to western Ukraine where they were stored and couldn't be deployed against Russian separatists.  Trump then decided to withhold $400 million in military aid while he tried to blackmail the Ukranian government to help his reelection campaign by digging up imaginary dirt on his opponent.

Do you really need a list of all the times Trump praised his favorite dictator and defended him, accepting his bald-faced lies while dismissing reality?

(Hint, that was not Trump)

Biden cancelled the XL pipeline while we import Russian petroleum products!!!!!!!!

Energy from Canada, no!

Energy from Russia, yes!

This only makes sense if defunding the Russian war machine is a lower priority to satisfying the well funded Green lobby.

I saw a general say this is not true.  That about 80% of the army are basically mercenaries.

I think this is a massive blunder from Putin.  This country might be easy to take but it will be impossible to hold.  There will be a massive underground resistance that will make occupation painful.  Russias economy is the size of Apple.  Empire is expensive.

It might take a while but this really could be Putin's undoing.  We can only hope his little midlife crisis does not include launching a few thousand nukes on his way out.

But I have to say reading around and even talking to friends it's hard for me to decide if the most stupid suicidal shite is coming from the right or the left.  I just got a FB message from a green partier that could have been issued by the Kremlin.  Complete with Nazi references for the Ukrainians.

However, financial sanctions are likely to pinch in a very short period of time since reducing Russia's capabilities to raise money and to effect transactions are readily possible. All the more possible if/when Russia is denied use of the SWIFT system of payments among banks.

The SWIFT system will, in my view, eventually (months?) be denied to Russia, but that will need to be rolled out so as to minimize winter heating problems in European countries. The goals are for the sanctions to hurt Russia much more than us and the European Union. For us, it would not be as major a step as for the European countries, since we are not dependent upon Russian natural gas(but we would be susceptible to the rising gas prices caused by the Russian shortfall). And, solidarity is as important a weapon as the particular sanctions themselves.

Trade sanctions are not much to look to: the US has little trade with Russia (anyone in the US just dying to get a Russian washing machine or vehicle?)and European countries, primarily, see Russia as a big gas station.

We're not going to see quick changes. The hop is that change will come as the Russian economic position begins to deteriorate.

Brezhnev was already wary of Khrushchev's aggressive efforts to reform the U.S.S.R.'s decrepit Stalinist-era socialist economy. But the Cuban Missile Crisis two years prior frankly alarmed Brezhnev, who thought the U.S.S.R. had been humiliated by Khrushchev's ill-advised showdown with President Kennedy.

Putin's War Ushers in Crisis for Russia
February 26, 2022 at 1:41 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 49 Comments

"President Vladimir Putin has ushered in a crisis for his country -- in its economy and identity," the New York Times reports.

"The Kremlin is hiding the reality of the country's attack on Ukraine from its own people, even cracking down on news outlets that call it a `war.'"

"But the economic carnage and societal turmoil wrought by Mr. Putin's invasion is becoming increasingly difficult to obscure."