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And if Russia blocks them, sink ‘em. Fuck Putin and his egotistical, narcissistic ass. Putin blames everyone but himself. He takes the victim stance on everything. Back in February, I was a firm believer that we should not get involved. I’m from the USA to be clear. But, Russia is getting out of control. Everything they have done is to cause pain and suffering to civilians. Ukraine’s military is beating their ass on the battlefield. So, Putin, the bitch that he is, attacks energy infrastructure to make the civilians of Ukraine suffer. Everyone is scared of nuclear annihilation, but let’s step in and not even give this bitch the chance to fire one off. Putin is a terrorist. He needs to be stopped. Period.

They need a peaceful escort from the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group.

I agree. But there are some considerations. You cannot kill him outright, that would lead to Russia falling apart in dozens of regions controlled by the local warlord and having armed conflicts with each other.

The thing to do would be transition power to a more sane consortium than what they have had the last 30 years. But that is not an easy thing to do. Everyone is corrupt, and everyone expects elections to be corrupt as well.

Ford isn't in the black sea, carriers are too heavy to get through the canal leading in. Additionally Turkey has rules and regulations to getting into the black sea, regarding warships.

Ford is actually in Canada right now — this much I knew. What I didn’t know is it couldn’t move through the Bosporus Strait.

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>Transit of aircraft carriers into the Black Sea is not specifically prohibited in the body of the Convention. But the 15,000-ton limitation imposed on non–Black Sea nation warships effectively precludes their transit.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/march/turkey-montreux-convention-and-russian-navy-transits-turkish

Yup. Other parts of a carrier strike group could go through pending approval.

Iam sure a sub full of tomahawks arent very far

I mean, this is pretty much why Russia even agreed in the first place (it was definitely NOT their newlyfound humanity, Russians are free of such burdens). UK was in actual talks to send their fleet to protect these ships and most likely under the table told Russia that their compliance is not necessary. USA already told Russia that if they see a nuke they will perform a magic trick that makes Black Sea fleet disappear which also implies using navy.

So now that Russia is officially withdrawing from this deal they are effectively testing West. We have the means to enforce it, now can we actually act on it? If NATO vessels actually arrive in the region you can bet that Russia will instantly go "oh, deal is back on, we have got what we wanted from our negotiations". Since let's be fair - British fishing boats have tied with entire might of the Russian Baltic fleet before and it's safe to assume Russia has not improved much since.

>also the war is pretty much a stalemate right now, ukraine isn’t really “kicking ass” they’ve just got 30+ billion in artillery and overhead support which slowly halts Russia’s advances

Technically speaking - as long as Russia is not winning it means it's losing. If your offensive war comes to a halt and 950 soldiers today just turned into minced meat for NOTHING then you can't keep it up forever. You need territorial gains because you lose long term.

On the other hand if Ukraine is not losing - it's winning. They can send their new recruits for training all over Europe, they receive additional equipment over time and they are slowly but steadily bleeding Russia dry. Especially since under all the sanctions Russia finds it difficult to replace their equipment. They can throw more untrained conscripts (and they CAN'T afford to train them properly if there's a risk of Ukraine being able to break the stalemate, they need to be using them on a daily basis) into meatgrinder. But this is a very costly tactic if it doesn't lead to any major victories.

I like this post, what sources do you have for that argument though? Genuine interest in reading about this.

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If they have such a large stockpile, why are they using old WW2 shit from museums? Why are they getting rockets and drones from Iran?

These ships are in Turkish waters. Why would Russia block them?

Russia is blockading Ukrainian ports.

There would be no reason for Russia to block these ships. The ships are in Turkish waters.

I'm confused by all this, ra-ra-sink'em nonsense.

In ww2 it took rooms of people months to crack codes to find out where military assets were. But for some reason people feel the need to advertise where they saw something to the entire world where anyone can see it.

What warship? This is an air transport vessel.

Power shifting to small local warlords who turn on each sounds infinitely better than putin.

And getting someone sane in place would be darn near impossible. If the usa couldn't do it in Cuba. They def cant in russia.

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It transports air... To float... Like a ship... 😳

you're in the wrong community for this kind of thing. nothing about allowing putin to win would be good for ukraine or the parts of the world that share values with it. nothing about accepting today's status quo would be good either.

We've tried this many times with disappointing results in smaller countries. We're talking about Russia, it's massive with many cultures. It would fail and we would end up with multiple countries. Which isn't a bad idea imho

Don't overrate Putin's individual importance to Russia. Eliminating Putin is vital, but unfortunately wouldn't break up the so-called "Russian Federation" into its 85 occupied parts. More than this would be required.

So, you basically want Afghanistan prior to the Taliban retaking the country, but give the local leaders nukes... that sounds awesome. /s

Which explains the increasing anti uk rhetoric in the last few weeks.

It’s a very bad idea but I don’t expect Americans to understand it.

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Maybe don't sink them if they're full of food?

Give them to Ukraine and the refugees

You were a firm believer in not getting involved? How could you be against providing weapons to the Ukrainians.

I’m not against it. I meant being directly involved. Meaning, the military of my country (being the United States of America) fighting against Russia. I want Ukraine to win. Fuck Putin and his entire regime. But the more and more this drags on, and the more and more I see how Putin is fucking off the innocent civilians of Ukraine on a daily basis, I wish we would do more. I feel it’s time for NATO to do something about this. We are the superpower of the world (NATO I mean) and it’s time to put this terroristic state to an end.

The U.S. never signed the Montreux convention. We go along with them because turkey is a NATO state, but we don't have to. The main reason you would never see a carrier in there is we don't need to. The ones in the Mediterranean would not have appreciably less fighter range to cover the area one in the black sea would cover, and would have more room to work anyways.

I really don’t get this. Small countries have been getting fucked by bigger ones since the dawn on civilization. At least the Ukrainians now have the weapons to match their will, thanks to NATO. But getting drawn into a war with Russia? No thanks. If you’d like you can go volunteer for Ukraine, but I’ll just watch and throw money at it.

Bosporus is not a canal. It's a strait over 2k ft wide. A Ford, or any other carrier could Tokyo drift through it sideways if she wanted to. The only reasons they don't are legal and tactical.

> what sources do you have for that argument though?

Just my own common sense and about sixty years of experience with how humans do things.

That is indeed one part of the problem. Another part would be huge streams of refugees, creating problems for everybody. A third consideration would be local warlords financing terrorist actions in other parts of the world.

They wont havr nuclear codes though

Multiple countries or regions in a loose federation is indeed a good idea.

The problem is that you would have to transfer power to legally established governments in those countries and in Russia, basically everyone who holds a position in any government function is a corrupt thug (not only in Russia, by the way).

You would have to restart things from scratch, like they did in Germany in 1945. Now that was a situation where several other big and mighty countries pushed for it, and in general the German population saw a need for things to change so they had a positive attitude.

In Russia, the effort to change things would be much greater. First, Russians are natural born pessimists. "And then it got worse" could as well be the first line of their national anthem.

Second, they have had a considerable brain drain in the past decades. It will be difficult to find qualified and honest people to run local governments. You have your elected representatives of course, but for each of those you need a hundred civil servants doing the actual work. Contrary to popular belief, that actually takes some brain power.

I'm pretty sure military and political strategists have been working on a solution for several years, starting way before February 24.

CIA, Mossad and MI6 probably have several kill teams on standby in st Petersburg and Moscow, ready to take out various people who might oppose a regime change. They are cooperating, although reluctantly.

The problem is that you don't want to create a power vacuum, that attracts the wrong kind of people and/or might lead to a civil war. You don't want that.

What you want is a transition of power in an orderly way.

My theory is that they are just going to wait him out. The man is well past his best before date, and no one lives forever. In the mean while, damage control.

Ask Russia, we don't know why they do the things they do lol. They were a part of the deal, and backed out. What that means is anybody's guess.

Gotta love armchair warmongers who think "we" should do more as long as it's from the comfort of their own home. As someone who spent 8 months of this year at sea under NATO command I don't appreciate when people like you casually sentence me and my friends to death for a conflict that have no business escalating.

>I feel it’s time for NATO to do something about this. We are the superpower of the world (NATO I mean) and it’s time to put this terroristic state to an end.

The same way you did in Iraq? The same way you did in Afghanistan? The only difference is that those two countries didn't have nuclear weapons. Grow some brain, stay in the USA, and stop trying to become a police of the world. Nothing good came out of the USA involvement anywhere in the world.

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If Ukraine keeps going, the US will have to find another fleet to threaten.

Turkey controls the Bosphorus strait and part of its waters, not the entire Black Sea.

> We go along with them because turkey is a NATO state, but we don't have to.

You have to since it's Turkish waters and you need Turkey's permission to pass through it. Turkey and Turkish public wants to avoid a war as much as possible, so Turkey might refuse to give access to US carriers just like it refused to give access to US troops into Iraq in 2003.

>just like it refused to give access to US troops into Iraq in 2003.

Wholly different set of events. In 2003, Erdogan gov failed to get the required amount of votes through parliament to allow US soldiers basing in Turkey.

Montreux is different. It's an internationally binding agreement, one which we like a lot. Turkey doesn't need US or US ships to help secure Black Sea. It's our sea.

>It's our sea.

Seeing as Russia is doing whatever it wants, that statement doesn't mean much

Are we at war with Russia? Is US?

Considering the most deniable way for Russia to impede these operations is through a rogue mine or two, not sure subs with Tomahawks will do much good…

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> one which we like a lot. Turkey doesn't need US or US ships to help secure Black Sea. It's our sea.

Yes, I didn't say anything different, except Turkey might deny US carriers access to Blacksea as it's Turkish waters..

Ah. Blocking grain export is one thing. Bombing a civilian ship is another. I think thisbis an invitation for Putin to put his money where his mouth is. And if he does bomb a grain ship...well I expect it will result in more of the same; more of the world resolved to stand against him.

North Korea has some menacing canoes.

>no one lives forever

Genetics plays a huge role when it comes to long life. His parents/grandparents lived quite long. He has access to the best medial care possible today. Of course he isn't immune to death but if he has no cancer/heart failure, we can expect him to live till his 80s.

The thing is, a lot of cancers can be cured if detected early. I have no doubts that they examine him regularly. He has trained for most of his life, isn't smoking, isn't drinking and is a health nut in general. All ingredients are there, we better think a way to assist his death otherwise it isn't very likely.

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The ships in question are in Turkish waters. I'm aware of Turkey's role in the Black Sea.

I think it’s romanticizing to think that there are “kill teams” in Russian cities. That’s very much just taking information from movies and thinking they are real.

Even if a vacuum was created, dealing with a dead Putin and a broken Russia now is 100% easier than a famine right now.

They probably are trying to figure out ways to take him out, but I highly doubt there are teams just idling their thumbs waiting.

In one form or another, the possibilities are being explored and implemented.

Perhaps there are no spooks actually living in those cities with the intention of going out and killing people on short notice.

Intelligence is being gathered, and plans are continually updated. Could be they send in teams when the moment turns critical. Could be they target them through blackmail. Could be they block their access to financial assets.

Just goes to show the geography classes are failing our students

It's Turkish waters so they can refuse passage.

It's a strait, they would normally be unable to refuse passage to a ship transiting from one location to the other in convention with normal international navigation law. China considers the Taiwan strait to be theirs, we drive through that all the time to annoy them anyways. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2943&context=ils#:~:text=Straits%20used%20for%20International%20Navigation,of%20the%20high%20seas%2FEEZ.

>let’s step in and not even give this bitch the chance to fire one off

Uh huh... Yeah I don't think you really appreciate nuclear deterrence forces and how they work.

As is the case in the US and among other world nuclear powers, Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles are always deployed and in a constant state of readiness. Russia has multiple submarines ready to go at any given moment, as well as ICBM's on mobile launchers stationed all over the country.

Stop acting like Russia is weak, they have the same nuclear capabilities as the US...

Yes but the straight of Taiwan is hundreds of miles wide. The Bosporus straight is like 1 km wide at its thinnest, and passes right through one of turkeys biggest cities. It's more like the Hudson River, and letting another nations warships pass right past the statue of liberty... If you don't have permission it's gonna be a serious problem.

>The U.S. never signed the Montreux convention. We go along with them because turkey is a NATO state, but we don't have to

r/ShitAmericansSay