Another Russian ship hit with missiles

 Red States:

Thursday evening, there was an unconfirmed report that another Russian surface combatant, the guided-missile frigate Admiral Makarov, was struck by a Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile. This is the same type of missile that sank the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, last month; read BREAKING. Russian Flagship Sinks While Being Towed to Port.

...

Philips P. O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews, offers some insights.

Been wondering why the stories of US intelligence helping the Ukrainians target Russian generals and warships have been appearing, clearly based on information passed on from US intelligence sources. Here is the one about the US helping to sink the Moskva.

The best explanation is in this story as well. Basically the leaks are deliberate US attempts to let Putin know that the ‘weight’ of the US and NATO are behind Ukraine. Iot, a deliberate warning to Russia not to escalate.

It’s certainly an escalation of a type by the Biden Administration, which indicates, one assumes, that they believe the Russians really are not likely to escalate themselves to tactical nukes. They are certainly giving Putin an argument to escalate were he so inclined.

Fits a pattern. For all the Russian talk about using nukes, etc, they have been given a number of major opportunities to justify to their own people the need for such escalation, but far normally respond by trying to downplay or ignore these opportunities.

If the Russians don’t start making a major deal of one of the most well known papers in the US saying that the US government is deliberately assisting the killing of Russian generals or the sinking of Russian warships, it’s probably safe to conclude Putin doesn’t want escalation.

.... 

Russian losses are mounting and at some point, Putin should decide that the effort in Ukraine is not worth the further weakening of the Russian military.  I think there is also a message in how good US intelligence is and the threat that the US poses to the Russian military if Putin attacks the US or  NATO.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more