The moment i heard the ukranian president talk about martial law, was the moment i realised they confected this whole thing. Ukraine has had purging its ethnic russians on the agenda, and this will give it the cover. No one responds to a minor border scuffle with talk of martial law unless it was pre-planned. The biggest concerns have been from the Russian side, seeking to annex and expand to more territory, and from the Ukranian side, some bs to give it the impetus for ethnic cleansing.
President Obama placed sanctions on Russia. You may remember those sanctions... the ones trump lifted (in return for ?). You may also remember trump changed the republican platform of arming Ukrainian resisters to a much more putin-friendly platform of providing general support to Ukraine. We also know that trump's emissary paul manafort worked for russia-friendly Ukrainians (in return for russian support?). And oddly, we didn't have numerous threads of discussion on how Obama was Putin's idiot...
Well since this apparently is another Trump thread it should be noted that this white house actually already put more sanctions in place over the Ukraine conflict in January https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/29000684.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/us/politics/trump-putin-meeting-g20.html Trump cancels meeting with Putin citing Ukraine
I saw some headline that said Putie did it after Biden called him a "killer". Kim Jong Fatt status if true. A different headline wanted Biden to walk away to a proxy war in Russia's backyard. No real good answers. Uhh more sanctions and forbidding Europe buying cheap O&G or laying pipelines?
My nightmare scenario is Pootie-Poot and Winnie the Pooh conspiring to simultaniously invade Ukraine and Taiwan and daring the US to deal with both at once. Doubt either one trusts the either enough to conspire, but the simultanious sabre rattling in both locations seems fortuitous.
